


One Blink and Then My Heart

by pillarboxred



Series: Poses [2]
Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, M/M, Second Chances, Trying to Be Friends and Failing (Not So) Miserably At It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 01:19:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4202481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pillarboxred/pseuds/pillarboxred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s just, it’s <i>Louis</i>.</p><p>Actual Louis, and Nick is going to go have a drink with him later and apologise and hopefully Louis will accept it, and that messy business of five years ago will really and truly be done with for once and for all.</p><p>And they might even could be friends again afterward.</p><p>Nick would like that more than anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Rufus Wainwright's "The Tower of Learning"
> 
> (Also featuring lots of TATE references because I am the worst.)

Nick is running very, very late.

Which, that really isn’t terribly unusual, but today it’s actually not his fault.

 _Wretched traffic_ , he thinks, racing up the clinic’s steps and through the plate-glass doors - no time to let Arlo toddle along holding his hand today - and skidding to a halt at the reception desk.

The girl sat there, with thick glasses and a long brown ponytail, gives him a very unenthused look, reminding him a bit of that one lady off _Parks and Recreation_ , the one whose name starts with the A.

Anna? Amanda? Antigua?

Nick has no idea. He’s still trying to catch up on _Hollyoaks_.

“I, um, we had an appointment,” he says, adjusting Arlo on his hip and looking around for a clock so he can see just _how_ late he is, eventually spotting one right above _Parks and Rec_ Girl’s head.

One that reads precisely nine.

The appointment, Nick remembers, had been for half eight.

"Name?"

"It’s under Hayden."

Maybe _Parks and Rec_ Girl hasn't noticed they’re late.

“Arlo?”

Nick nods.

“His appointment was at 8.30.”

Damn. She did notice.

“I know,” Nick says, tugging at his hair with his free hand. It’s a habit he’s never quite managed to break. “It’s just, there was a collision and the road was blocked for a bit and…”

 _Parks and Rec_ Girl, which, that’s cumbersome so he’s just going to be referring to her as P&R Girl from now on, doesn’t _say_ anything, but, judging by the expression on her face, she really couldn't care less.

“Dr Townsend isn’t free again until this afternoon,” she says, going back to her computer.

Nick can’t come back this afternoon. He has to _work_ this afternoon.

“Isn’t there anything you can do?” he asks, trying his very best to look as pleading as possible and still maintain a bit of dignity.

Not that Nick’s ever really thought of himself as terribly dignified, but he likes having the illusion that he could be.

P&R Girl types a bit, and, squinting at her screen, says, “Dr Shelley’s available right now if you don’t mind seeing him instead.”

“I don’t mind,” Nick says quickly, lest some mum pop up out of nowhere, elbow him out of the way, and take the slot.

“He’s in for a review right?”

“Yeah,” Nick says, finally setting Arlo down and grabbing his hand before he can even think of getting away. He’d learned that lesson right quick in a Waitrose car park once - he’d got Arlo out of his car seat, set him down on the ground, and had to immediately give chase - and it’s not a lesson he’s going to be repeating, thank you very much.

“You can wait in the well child room if you like,” P&R Girl says, leaning over and hitting something that results in a loud buzzing sound and a nearby door opening.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he says, already rushing away in case she changes her mind and shuts the door on him midway through. He doesn’t think she would on account of Arlo, but then she might just wait until Arlo’s through and shut it on _him_.

At least in the well child room he can let Arlo loose on the toys whilst he’s catching his breath, which, that’s what he does, bends over with his hands on his knees thinking _useless gym membership_ over and over again whilst Arlo heads right over to some piano-type thing and immediately starts banging away on it.

Once Nick thinks he’s recovered enough, he collapses into a nearby chair, one that puts his knees up by his ears, and he waits, hoping the entire time that this Dr Shelley isn’t some...monster who’s going to give Arlo, like, one hundred shots or something when he really only needs ten.

He actually doesn’t know how many shots a two-year-old needs - this is his first time bringing a kid of any sort to a doctor of any sort - but if he had to guess, he’d say ten sounds about right.

He buries his face in his hands, peeking through his fingers so he can still keep an eye on Arlo, and he thinks, _Mairead and Chris are going to kill me. They are going to kill me until I am dead from it, and then I won’t get to be Arlo’s god-dad anymore_.

Nick thinks the not being Arlo’s god-dad would be the worst part of it.

He already knows what dead is like. He’s _felt_ it.

 _But you don’t anymore_ , he thinks - reminds himself - pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, pushing at them and rubbing them until he can see spots of colour.

And, he really shouldn’t be doing that. He hasn’t got his glasses with him or a spare set of contacts, but it feels good, and it’s grounding, and he’s got his bus pass so it isn’t like he and Arlo can’t take a very convoluted route back to his if he does end up grinding these lenses to shreds and can’t see enough to drive. Arlo’d probably like that actually. Think it was an adventure or summat.

He’s still rubbing when he hears a voice say, “Are you alright?”

Nick’s hands stop. So does his heart.

That isn’t P&R Girl.

“It’s just…”

The voice trails off.

Nick moves his hands away from his face.

Opens his eyes. His contacts, miraculously, are still in place. Not in shreds.

“We’ve got an eye wash station,” Louis, _Louis_ , is saying, stood there before him in a set of green froggy scrubs with a small sort of smile on his face. “If you’re needing it.”

Nick can’t do anything but shake his head.

It’s just...it’s _Louis_.

Actual Louis. 

Not Possibly Louis, Too-Tall-To-Be-Louis, Nevermind-The-Hair’s-Too-Dark-To-Be-Louis, The-Voice-Isn’t-The-Same-So-It-Isn’t-Louis.

But Actual Louis, with longer hair and sharper angles.

Actual Louis, who’s every bit as...dizzying to look at as he’d been five years ago.

 _Five years_.

“I mean, it’s chiefly designed for children so you might have to squat a bit…” Louis says, his smile growing wider, more dizzying. “But if you ask me very nicely I might can show you where the employee one is.”

Nick’s still so dazzled that all he can do is laugh and hold onto his knees to keep from tipping forward out of the Arlo-sized chair he’d managed to wedge himself into.

And it isn’t like he hadn’t ever imagined running into Louis again - because he _had_ , more so when he’d begun to feel better, if only because he’d had a burning need to apologise for being a knob when they’d met - but he’d never imagined it’d be in a place like _this_ , surrounded by bright colours and toys and tiny furniture.

“You talk to all of your patients like that?” he asks, smile still stretching his very faintly warm cheeks.

“Ah but you’re not my patient are you?” Louis says, adding with a quick glance down his side, “I believe this handsome fellow wrapped around my legs is my patient, and anyway, the eye wash station’s built for guys like him so he wouldn’t have to squat at all.”

“Well I’d have got him off of you,” Nick says, craning his neck to see around Louis’s trolley that he’s leaning against, finding that Arlo is indeed wrapped around Louis’s thighs, “but then you said such things about my height that I don’t know if I want to anymore.”

“Such great height though,” Louis says, still looking down at Arlo, making all manner of faces at him, causing him to giggle and if anything, hold on tighter. “So I said great things I’m sure.”

“Not so certain that you did if I’m honest,” Nick says, unfolding himself at last out of his little chair, rubbing a bit at the twinge in his hip. Won’t be doing _that_ again. “But if you’re going to reference The Postal Service at me then I suppose I don’t have any choice.”

“Can do The Get Up Kids if that’s any better,” Louis says, and Nick can feel his eyes on him as he’s gently trying to unwrap Arlo’s arms from about his legs whilst praying that Arlo doesn’t kick up a fuss.

He understands though, would quite like to look at Louis for a bit, for a long time, if he thought it was allowed.

“Think that’d be worse actually,” he says, standing up slowly on account of his dodgy knees. Well, it’s either the dodgy knees or the very heavy, very squirmy two-year-old in his arms. He rather hopes it’s the latter, even if the former’s much more likely. “Unless you’ve got something to write home about, then I suppose I can resist that one.”

Louis laughs, and if his smile was dizzying, then the way he looks when his face lights up and his eyes crinkle is even more so. “Might do in fact,” he says, adjusting his fringe ever so slightly, only to have it fall right back where it was. “Might have something I need to tell me mum.”

Nick knows he has something to tell _his_ mum, and something to tell Aimee right after. And won’t _she_ be surprised. But she might finally forgive him at the same time, so yes, he is definitely telling Aimee.

“Be sure to tell her I was devastatingly charming and that my shirt was lovely.”

“I will,” Louis says, still laughing, still dizzying. “I will tell her that. Except I’m not going to lie to her about your shirt, Nicholas, because what even is that? Looks like it’s got...well it looks like it’s got something on that I’m not saying here, what with there being children present.”

“You’re wearing cartoons though.”

“Cartoons that my little sister picked out thanks,” Louis says, nudging his trolley a bit ahead of him and following it, which, right, they are here for a reason, and they probably ought to be getting on with it. “And besides, the little lad likes them too, so I think I’ll be trusting his judgment and not his dad’s.”

They’re halfway down the corridor, but hearing that, Nick stops short.

“I’m not his dad. His dad is Chris,” he says, shock eventually fading away into humour. “You really thought…”

“I didn’t _know_ ,” Louis says, ducking his head and pushing at his trolley again. Nick thinks his face is ever so slightly red, and he’d feel badly for him, he would, it’s just...it’s funny, the idea of him being anyone’s _dad_. “I thought you might…could be is all.”

Although if Louis really thinks he’s truly capable of being someone’s actual parent then he might be revising that opinion.

He’ll have to ask later.

Because he is planning to come back later, do this proper.

“He’s my friend Mairead’s,” he says, following Louis into a room all kitted out in _Thomas & Friends_, from the prints on the walls to the exam couch itself. “I’m just his god-dad, supposed to be spoiling him and corrupting him and handing him back off when he’s in a strop. Bringing him in today because Chris is out of town and Mairead’s got a meeting she can’t get out of.”

“Don’t think I remember a Mairead,” Louis says, pushing the door closed behind him and turning his attention to the computer screen situated atop his trolley, tapping away at the keys just as swiftly as P&R Girl had done. Nick decides it must be an office thing. Typing tests and toddlers. Sounds about right.

“Don’t think you would,” Nick says, paying very close attention to a drawing of some train named Mavis - he doesn’t remember a Mavis but he hasn’t watched _Thomas_ in a very long while - and trying to silence the nasty little voice reminding him of _why_ Louis had never met Mairead. “She and I weren’t real close until I…”

He stops, not really sure he wants to be saying _until I lost it for good after you left and moved back in with my mum and I ran into Mairead and she yelled at me a lot, which, that helped, and she’s the one who helped get me my new job that I love and I owe Mairead so much you have no idea._

“Until you what?” Louis asks, and out of the corner of his eye, Nick can see that he’s being studied again.

So he clears his throat and looks back that way, back at Louis, and says, “Until I got to know her better.”

It’s such a lousy response, and Nick knows it, can tell by the way Louis nods and goes back to his computer, but he just...he can’t dump all of that on Louis right now. He just found him again, and he will _not_.

But because he doesn’t much like the firm set of Louis’s mouth he adds, “But you might like her I think. She’s very...noisy.”

“Are you saying I’m noisy Nicholas?” Louis asks, looking up at him with a tiny smile and pushing his trolley to the side, sliding into its place some other sort of medical apparatus with a seat on top.

“Well you work with children so you might like a bit of noise,” Nick says, relieved. “Not exactly a quiet bunch.”

“They aren’t, but that isn’t it at all,” Louis says, unfolding a piece of paper and smoothing it down over the seat. “If you’ll get that one down to his nappy I can get him weighed.”

“Alright,” Nick says, carrying Arlo over to the exam couch, sitting him down, and trying to wedge off his trainers. They’d looked _amazing_ , neon hi-tops with the flashy lights, so retro, but they’re rather a pain in the arse to get on and off Arlo’s feet.

“You buy him those shoes?” he hears Louis ask, and he’s just got Arlo laid down and is attempting to divest him of his trousers when he looks up and sees Louis watching him, leaned against what’s probably the scale now that Nick thinks about it, looking almost, dare Nick hope, the slightest bit fond.

“Cool ones aren’t they?” he asks, finally getting Arlo out of his trousers, sitting him back up, and taking off first the tiny Libertines hoodie he’d had made for him - the one Mairead had had a _fit_ over she’d loved it so - and then attempting the thermal top he’d put on underneath, reckoning it would be suitably warm for an Arlo, and Arlo could wear the hoodie like Nick had wanted him to instead of some bulky, not nearly so awesome jumper.

“They are actually,” he hears Louis say as he’s trying to pull Arlo’s top over his still rather impressively large head, having to undo a button or two to make it go. “Might get them for my brother when he’s big enough.”

“When’d you get a brother?” Nick asks, remembering sisters very vaguely, but not a brother.

“Recently,” Louis says, patting the seat right next to him, stepping back a bit when Nick comes up and sits Arlo down in it. “Mum’s just had twins, girl and a boy.”

“I thought…” Nick says, biting back the _your parents divorced_ trying to come out of his mouth. Very much not the time.

“His name’s Dan,” Louis says, squinting a bit at the display and then clacking away at his computer keys again, probably entering Arlo’s weight if Nick had to guess. “My new stepdad, not my brother. That’s Ernie. Ernest and Doris, that’s the twins. They’re his.”

Oh. 

“That’s...nice,” Nick says. It is, he thinks.

“Mum’s happy, and I’ve got babies to play with when I go back home, so yeah it is pretty nice actually,” Louis says with a bit of a shrug. “And Dan’s alright, so it’s fine really.”

“Well that’s good then,” Nick says. “If she’s happy and you get on with him.”

“I do,” Louis says, shooting him a quick glance and a small smile.

Small and still doing funny things to Nick’s insides. Still dizzying. Unbelievable.

“So how much?” he asks, adding when Louis looks over, eyebrows raised, “How much does he weigh?”

Nick figures it’s something he needs to know, something Mairead will probably ask, and he’s more than willing to change the subject, steer it away from Louis’s family business before any less than pleasant memories decide to pop up.

“Oh, um,” Louis says, going back to his computer and clicking around, reading off, “Two stone.”

“Two stone and he’s two,” Nick says. “That’s like, a stone for each year.”

“It is,” Louis says, digging around on his trolley some, coming up with a scroll-type looking thing. “Which, that’s average really, so it isn’t bad or anything in case you’re wondering.”

“Was actually,” Nick says, because he really, truly had been. “There’s these crisps made from apples that he likes, and they’re really good, but his mum’s always getting cross with me because I give him too many, so now I can go back and tell her he weighs just fine, the doctor said.”

“Not the doctor,” Louis says, smiling with a little shake of his head. “The nurse. But yes, you can go back and tell her that if you like. Might even give you a nice piece of paper saying so when we’re done here. Proof if you like.”

Nick would like that. “Does the paper come with a sticker?”

“Yes but not for you,” Louis says with a bit of a smirk. “Only this one’s getting the sticker,” he adds, wiggling his fingers at Arlo, “on account of how he’s not sicked up on me yet or thrown something at me. Been the perfect little gentleman he has.”

“That happen often? The sicking up and getting things tossed at you?” Nick had an idea that paediatrics might be gross, but he’d never considered that it’d be _deadly_.

“More than I’d like,” Louis says, adjusting his fringe again and gesturing at Arlo with his scroll. “Just need to see how long he is and then he’ll be ready to see the doctor.”

“Is he going to need shots you think?” Nick asks, picking up Arlo and following Louis over to the exam couch, watching as he spreads out his scroll that’s really just a giant ruler mat with a bit of plastic jutting out at the top. He hopes Arlo doesn’t have to have shots. He doesn’t want Arlo remembering god-dad time as _painful_.

“Don’t think so, no,” Louis says, smoothing out the creases. “Unless he’s behind on one, but I don’t think he gets any until he’s four and he’ll be up for a second dose of the MMR and that lot. Dr Shelley can tell you for sure though.”

Nick thinks Arlo’s caught up. He should be, given how much Mairead likes to go on rants about the nutters that don’t vaccinate their kids. He doesn’t think she’d let him fall behind.

“His mum’s well opposed to people not giving their kids their shots,” he says, laying Arlo down like Louis tells him to with his head at the plastic bit and then grabbing his feet to keep them still.

“Good on her,” Louis says, peeking around Nick’s elbow and down at Arlo’s feet. “She’d get on with my mum. Every week she’s going off about it. Not that I blame her or anything, because she’s right, but yeah, you hear it enough eventually you start to tune it out a bit. You can pick him up now.”

So Nick does, watching as Louis rolls his mat back up and bundles it back into his trolley, going back to his computer and reading out as he’s typing, “He’s 75cm, just so you know. Good length for a little lad his age.”

“So he should get two stickers then,” Nick says, giving Arlo a slight rub on the back with his thumb. “On account of how doubly good he is.”

“Limit’s one,” Louis says, laughing just a bit, and it really is so lovely, his face when it gets like that. Nick’d never realised how much he’d missedit until right about now. Doesn’t miss some of the other bits so much, and some not at all, but he has missed that. Missed _Louis_. He is definitely coming back to see him later, has to skive off work to do it, but he thinks the crew’d understand. “But what with us being old friends I will see what I can do.”

 _What with us being old friends_.

Nick rather likes the sound of that.

And figuring now’s as good as any other time to ask, he says, sitting Arlo back down on the exam couch and grabbing onto his hand so he won’t topple off, “Don’t suppose I could buy my old friend a drink later? It’s just, I’ve got something I really need to talk with him about, and I don’t imagine he wants to get into it at his work.”

Louis’s eyes get very, very wide almost instantly, and Nick’s just about to think he blew it royally, but then Louis’s face clears, settles into something almost soft, and he says, running a hand through his fringe, “Think your old friend might be well up for that, actually, except he’s probably going to want to be going home and changing first so he doesn’t have to go out smelling like sick and looking like he’s off CBeebies.”

“Think that’d be alright,” Nick says, almost fluttery with relief. Louis is going to meet him later. He can _apologise_. “Does he have a regular place or do I get to pick?”

“Don’t know if he fancies going to his regular,” Louis says, and if Nick didn’t know better, he’d say he almost looks _happy_. “So I suppose he’ll let you pick.”

“Molly?” It’s in the middle-like.

Louis’s eyes practically light up. “I have actually never been to Molly, but I’ve heard of it. Been wanting to go but I never get up there.”

“Meet you there at seven?” Maybe Nick won’t have to skive off work as early as he’d planned, which is actually a bit of a relief since he can try to drown himself in his job so he won’t spend all afternoon obsessing. He’s going to do it anyway, but his chances are lower if he’s going to have to do his paperwork, which, he ordinarily hates his paperwork and tries to do it as little as possible, but he isn’t above trying to use it to distract himself.

“Seven is perfect,” Louis says, and it almost looks like he’s bouncing on his feet a bit. Nick knows the feeling. 

It’s just, it’s _Louis_.

Actual Louis, and Nick is going to go have a drink with him later and apologise and hopefully Louis will accept it, and that messy business of five years ago will really and truly be done with for once and for all.

And they might even could be friends again afterward.

Nick would like that more than anything else.

“So I’ll see you at seven then,” Nick says, not even bothering to conceal the smile curving his lips. "Best be letting you get back to work and all."

"Yeah, might better do," Louis says with a smile of his own. "Dr Shelley will be in with you soon, and I'll just have the young gentleman's stickers and his paper waiting for him at the check-out desk."

"Promise I won't filch the stickers." He might end up _wearing_ the stickers - he usually does whenever Arlo’s got stickers in his vicinity - but that’s something completely different.

“I’ll know if you do,” Louis says, and Nick isn’t even going to ask him _how_ he’ll know, just laughs and waves him off, waiting until the door’s closed behind him to turn back to Arlo and give him a bit of a tickle on his collarbones.

It’s just, he’s got to do _something_ , can’t keep this happiness and hope all locked up inside his head, doesn’t want to jinx it either by keeping it all to himself.

So if he’s got Arlo on his shoulders and is stomping around the room with him when the doctor finally comes in, then that’s entirely why.

~*~

Vic and Fiona make him go home at half four, saying he’s entirely too bouncy and insufferable to be dealing with on a Tuesday. Friday maybe, but Tuesday no.

He pouts at them as best he can - because he really _had_ been intending to do his paperwork, despite his absolute inability to make the slightest bit of sense of it - but they’re immoveable, and even Liam, their brand new sound tech who’s been very reliable all week about taking Nick’s side, just shrugs and nods his head a little when Nick asks if he’s really being that annoying.

Nick has never felt so utterly betrayed.

But it’s fine. It is.

He’s got a phone call to make anyway.

Several phone calls actually, and he doesn’t think Aimee would mind so much if he happened to freak out just the slightest bit on her.

He might be anticipating a bit of a freak out.

So yes, it’s fine, but still, he threatens them all with a “You’ll be hearing about it tomorrow!” on his way out the door.

~*~

He manages to get Aimee to come over instead.

He needs someone to make sure he doesn’t have this entire bottle of red by himself, that’s what it is.

Can’t show up wanting to apologise to someone and be off your arse after all.

Isn’t proper.

And if he needs someone to pat his shaking hand and tell him it’s all gonna be alright, to calm down, to not overthink it, that he’s doing the right thing, that she’s so proud of him, then that’s alright. 

It doesn’t _mean_ anything.

It. Doesn’t. Mean. A. Thing.

“But what if he’s just being kind Aims?” he asks, burying his face in his hands. “What if earlier he was just in a situation where he felt like he couldn’t say no?”

Nick thinks he could be sick. 

_That’s_ the one thing he’d never wanted Louis to ever feel, and if he’s going to feel it _now_ , of all times, then yes, Nick is going to be very much sick.

Aimee’s rubbing his back. “But you said he looked happy right?”

Nick nods. Louis _had_ but… “What if he was just pretending?”

“Well I wasn’t there obviously,” Aimee says. “But I don’t think anybody’s _that_ good at pretending to be happy when they’re really not. You’d know.”

“How would I know?”

“They’d be acting weird wouldn’t they? Nervous and fumbling-like, ready to get the hell out and away from you. You could tell their smile was fake, that sort of thing.”

She’s got a point, and when she asks if Louis’s smile had looked fake, he honestly has to shake his head, dragging his fingers down over his eyes, and opening them.

“He was joking about my height,” he says through his fingertips, steepling them in front of his mouth.

“Well there you go,” Aimee says, sitting back and picking up her wine glass. “Don’t think he’d be joking with you if he was that uncomfortable. He’d have been all...business-like, get it done and get out, get _you_ out.”

“He said Arlo could have an extra sticker because we were old friends, me and him.”

“Sounds like he was glad to see you then.”

“It was train stickers,” Nick says, rubbing at his cheeks. “I had to wear both of them. Arlo said.”

“I’m sure they were smashing on you. Did Louis see?”

Nick shakes his head again. “No,” he says, dropping his hands to his knees and grasping at them, dragging his fingernails back and forth over the denim. “He’d left them for us, had other patients to get to, that sort of thing.”

“Can’t believe little Louis became a nurse.”

Nick frowns ever so slightly at the word “little,” but he can. Believe, that is. That Louis became a nurse. 

“He always would do what he wanted,” Nick says, flopping back onto the sofa beside Aimee, lacing his hands together and resting them on his belly.

“You don’t seem so upset about that anymore.”

Nick looks over at her, and she’s got her wine glass at her lips again, so all he can really see is her warped face and raised eyebrows.

And he’s not, really. Upset, that is.

“Well it’s different now, isn’t it?” Nick asks. “He’s not in sixth form anymore. He’s...he can do whatever he wants.”

And if whatever Louis wants is to not see him again, then Nick will...find a way to deal with it. 

He’s been without Louis for five years, and he’s been fine.

Well, not _completely_ fine - the way it ended with Louis being such a niggling little thing, the idea, the remembrance that he’d been _horrible_ nagging at him - but he’s got better and he’s managed.

He can do it again if he has to.

~*~

Nick’s so determined not to be late that he ends up arriving at Molly at half six.

He’s sat on the steps outside, his legs stuck out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, listening to a song by Gomez he’d forgotten he even had on his phone and debating the wisdom of Christmas socks in April when out of the corner of his eye he sees a pair of legs in tight black trousers stop right beside him. 

He looks up and over, and once again, it’s...Louis.

He’d showed up.

Nick’s heart abruptly decides to take up residence in his throat.

That dizzying feeling’s back and in spades.

Because Louis is the sort of person who could make froggy scrubs work, so what really is Nick supposed to do when he’s stood there before him in tight trousers and a t-shirt that dips below his collarbones, showing off a hint of a tattoo that definitely hadn’t been there five years ago?

How, honestly, is Nick supposed to stay upright?

And Louis is smiling at him and saying something, and it’s only after he’s stopped moving his mouth that Nick remembers he’s got his earbuds in.

He yanks them out, having to tug harder at the left one since it seems to want to be caught, and the very first thing he hears is Louis laughing.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, wrapping his earbuds around his mobile and shoving the lot in his coat pocket.

“It’s nothing, it’s dumb,” Louis says, waving a hand and taking a seat on the steps beside Nick, still smiling and studying him. “You’re early.”

And if Louis is going to be looking at him like that - rather suspiciously like he’s playing spot the difference with Nick’s face - then Nick thinks he’s probably allowed to be looking at him like that back.

It’s a good excuse at any rate.

“So are you,” he says, taking in sharper cheekbones and a more defined jawline, eyes as bright a blue as they’d ever been.

Louis laughs again, poking his tongue ever so slightly between his teeth. “It’s just, Katie, at the reception desk, she said you’d been running late this morning so that’s why you had to see Shelley instead of Townsend.”

“So you thought I’d be late this evening?”

“No, just,” Louis says, ducking his head and fussing with his fringe a bit. “Just...it’s nothing really. How are you?”

“I’m...good.” Understatement of the century, that. “How are you?”

“I’m good yeah,” Louis says, and he’s smiling again, so Nick’s going to allow himself to believe that it’s true. "Although, I have to tell you something."

Nick's heart is back in his throat.

"Don't think I want to get a drink."

His heart’s now in his mouth.

“Think I’d rather have a cup of tea instead.”

Nick’s heart is back where it belongs.

He can breathe again.

“If that’s alright.”

“‘Course it’s alright,” Nick says, springing up and looking around like a tea room’s going to magically appear, when he very suddenly remembers that there _is_ a tea room nearby, an _excellent_ tea room in fact. “Know just the place actually. It’s up the street a bit.”

“Alright,” Louis says, standing up. “Let you lead on then. Never over this way, so I’m afraid I don’t really know my way around.”

“Where do you stay then?” Nick says, especially keen to offer Louis his arm to keep him from getting lost, only he’s not sure if that’d be acceptable. Harry and Douglas aren’t ever bothered, but Louis is definitely not Harry and Douglas. “Not that I’m trying to be nosy or anything” he absolutely is “just wondering where you ended up.”

“Rent a room over in Whalley Range,” Louis says, falling into step with him, walking close enough that their sleeves brush. “With an old uni mate and his boyfriend. What about you?”

Nick has to clear his throat, swallow very hard. “Hulme. I’m...in Hulme.”

Louis stops so abruptly that Nick thinks he can feel a slight breeze.

“You are shitting me,” Louis says, and when Nick stops and looks back at him, he thinks nothing less than gobsmacked would be accurate to describe the look on his face. “ _Hulme_?”

Nick’s sure that gobsmacked is an equally accurate description of his own face. He nods. “It was a bit cheaper,” he says, as best he can his mouth is so dry, “than trying to live in the centre, and it’s decently close to work so…”

“So you live in Hulme,” Louis says, running a hand over his face, pausing it at his mouth before sending it back up into his fringe.

“And you’re in Whalley Range,” Nick says, his fingers practically itching to get into his own hair, but that’d probably be entirely too creepily copy-cat like, so he just sort of flexes them a bit hoping to get the itch out.

“I am in Whalley Range,” Louis says, dropping his hand to his side, curling it into a fist, and giving his thigh a couple of taps. 

“Could almost say we’re neighbours,” Nick says, giving up at last and tugging ever so slightly at his hair.

“Just about, yeah,” Louis says, eyes flicking up to Nick’s hair for an instant and back down, smile softening his features. “Might mean I can just get a ride back with you then. You know, instead of having to take the bus.”

Nick can’t help but smile back at him. He gives his hair a final pull and tucks his hand into his coat pocket. “Be glad to,” he says, absolutely meaning it. “Be glad to give you a ride home if you’re needing one.” 

“Might could even meet Niall and Liam if they’re in,” Louis says, and Nick’s up for that, certainly, but…

“Did you just say Liam?”

Nick knows a Liam. Just started working with a Liam. A Liam about Louis’s age, now that he thinks about it.

“Yeah,” Louis says, nodding, somehow stuffing his hands into his jeans pockets. “Niall’s the old uni mate, and Liam’s his boyfriend. We’ve been living together since we were all in second year.”

And that’s really entirely too much.

Entirely. Too. Much.

Nick doubles over he’s laughing so hard.

“What?” he hears Louis ask. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Nick gasps out, waving his hand, still bent over grasping at his knees.

“What’d I say?”

“Nothing, it’s just…” Nick says, forcing himself upright and running his hand through his hair again and then putting it back in his coat, biting down on his lip a bit to keep from grinning like an absolute loon. “I work with a Liam. A Liam who’s always either going on about his boyfriend named Niall or his other housemate who doesn’t ever do the washing up.”

“I’d do the washing up if Niall didn’t get to it first and Liam…” Louis says, then stops short, eyes round, eventually finishing with, as _his_ smile grows, “knows that. He _knows_ Niall’s a tidy little bastard, and he’s one to talk because he’s always leaving his things everywhere. Don’t let him go telling you it’s all me, because it isn’t.” 

“Don’t know,” Nick says, taking his hands out of his coat and stuffing them into his own jeans pockets. “Also says you’re deathly allergic to wearing socks and…” he glances down at Louis’s very much indeed bare ankles shown off by his rolled-up trousers and back up “I see you aren’t wearing any so...think he might be right.”

Louis colours then scowls. “Ask him about the pasta tub sometime. See what he says then.”

“Might do,” Nick says, rocking back on his heels. “If I see him later.”

Nick’s hoping there’s still going to _be_ a later. Still has to apologise and all, can’t put it off forever, and there’s a little, rather annoying part of him that insists it isn’t going to go well.

He’s going to shut that part up as long as he can.

And to his relief, Louis tells him “you better,” which, there might be a later after all.

“I do promise,” he says, earning himself another dizzying smile that he will gladly take, adding, “And I’ve also promised you a beverage of some sort, so probably ought to be getting on with that, yeah?”

“Might, yes,” Louis says. “Am parched. Been a long, interesting day it has. Got sicked up on _twice_ but I also got to go do a home visit and measure a newborn and then my old friend dropped by the office and invited me out, and yeah...”

“And yeah,” Nick echoes with a bit of an actual giggle, earning himself a sort of finger-jab in the stomach - and how he’s missed _that_ \- along with a “buy me my tea already Nicholas and you won’t get the other one.”

What else is Nick going to do but oblige?

~*~

He ends up getting Louis tea _and_ rarebit.

It’d been on offer, and Louis’s eyes had lit up at it being on the menu at all, so Nick dutifully got him his tea and his rarebit, and he’s sat back watching him tear into it, his own tea and a sandwich in front of him.

“Goat’s cheese Nicholas?” Louis asks, gesturing at Nick’s plate with his tea cup.

“And figs,” Nick says, still not decided if he’s even going to be eating it on account of his nerves having kicked up such a fuss. “With honey.”

“Still into the healthy food then.”

Nick shrugs. “Actually finally did get rid of the carob.”

Louis laughs and covers his mouth with his hand, eventually asking, “Did you give it a proper sending off? Speech and everything?”

Nick had pitched it solidly into the rubbish the day after Louis had left, stomping on it for good measure until it’d all come spilling out of the bag, absolutely pulverised. But at least it’d already been in the rubbish at that point, so he hadn’t had to clean it up.

“Yeah,” he says, tracing the rim of his teacup with one finger, focusing on it and not at all on the looming _do it, do it now_. “Full honours.”

“Do regret that I missed that,” and when Nick looks up, Louis is wiping his hands off and then propping his chin on one of them.

“No you don’t,” Nick’s quick to say, studying his fingers for a bit before finally meeting Louis’s eyes.

They’re just so... _blue_ and large and...uncertain, Nick thinks.

Yes, uncertain is a word for it.

“It’s just, uh,” he says, clearing his throat and looking down again, “the day I sent it off wasn’t a good day so to speak.”

“Oh,” Louis says, and Nick can just barely see him ducking his head and running his fingers through his fringe.

“Wasn’t anything to do with you,” he’s quick to add, so proud of himself for not even flinching when Louis’s head pops right back up. “Was me being a knob, really, and just...I’ve been wanting to tell you...that I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Louis asks, and it isn’t Nick’s imagination that he’s paled some. “What are you sorry for?”

“I…,” Nick begins, his heart pounding as he’s searching for the words. “I was...I wasn’t kind to you Louis, and I’ve realised that since we’ve been apart, and I just wanted you to know it wasn’t right, me treating you like that, and I’m sorry.”

There.

It’s out at least.

Whatever else happens, it’s out.

“Is that really what you’ve been thinking all this time?”

That...hadn’t been the response he’d been expecting, but he nods all the same.

"You haven’t got anything to be sorry about Nicholas," Louis says, and Nick definitely hadn’t been expecting _that_. "It’s just...it was what it was, right? Nobody's fault really, just something that couldn't have been helped."

"Yes but..." Nick begins, because he’s sure it can’t be this easy, but he’s soon cut off.

"I mean, if anything, I thought you'd be angry with me on account of how I just left and didn't ever come back."

"Why would you come back? Wasn’t anything in it for you."

Louis shrugs. "Didn’t want to at first actually, because of how, well, nevermind. But you know how it is when you get to thinking..."

Nick does know.

"And you keep thinking and thinking and then one day you're wondering if maybe you got it wrong."

 _Wrong_?

"I don't think you were wrong Louis," and Nick can see that he’s definitely paled some. "It wasn't...easy, but at the time I think it might have been necessary. Like you said."

Louis audibly exhales. "Yeah," he says, brightening a bit. "I mean, look at us now, yeah? Having our tea on Richmond Street like the civilised people we are."

Nick laughs. Louis’s got a point after all.

"That’s us alright," he says, finally taking a sip of his tea.

"Might even could say we’re going places."

Nick would like to say that.

Especially if it does involve a _we're_.

And he will play along, sure, so he asks, "Where are we going Louis?"

It comes out more seriously than he'd intended, since a bit of the brightness drops off Louis’s face replaced by a smidge of hesitation that he very much doesn’t like the look of, so he’s quick to add, "I mean, pick a place after we're done here, and we will go there. Us and our going places."

"Don't know," Louis says, but the brightness is back. "Lots of places, right? Might be hard picking just one."

"Could just go wandering around until we find a place. Proper place."

Louis’s face gets even brighter. "Like that I think. It can be a start."

It can absolutely be a start.

"I'm ready whenever you are."

"I'm ready right now."

“Alright,” Nick says, taking another sip of tea, eyeing his as yet untouched sandwich before deciding that no, still a bit nervy, or maybe just excited, so no sandwich, and setting about getting the bill paid.

~*~

By the time they reach Sackville Park, which admittedly isn’t too far away, Nick has learned a number of things.

For instance, that Louis hadn’t ended up going to uni with Zayn - Zayn having eloped to France with his sixth form girlfriend and still apparently attempting the starving artist lifestyle in a place called Fréjus, which, no thanks. Nick might not always eat his dinner, but he likes knowing he’ll _have_ his dinner - but Louis _had_ met Niall right away when he’d gone to uni by himself and had been fool enough to challenge him to a drinking contest, losing spectacularly.

“I mean, his name’s Niall, Louis,” Nick says, laughing. “Did you really expect to win a drinking contest against a guy named _Niall_?”

“Did actually,” Louis says, grinning over at him and looking back down at his feet as they’re walking. He really is stunning. “You know how it is, get away with pinching your mum’s liquor enough and you start to thinking you’re God with an iron liver.”

“Can’t say I ever thought I was capable of challenging an Irishman to a drinking contest though,” Nick says, although he does remember an ill-advised bottle of Peach Schnapps he’d lifted from his mum’s cupboard and an even more ill-advised lad named Robert for whom body spray was as good as bathing, and he tells Louis so.

Louis laughs, stopping in front of a bench and dropping down onto it. "Poor Nicholas," he says, running his hands up and down his thighs. "Been on my feet all day so I think I’ll have a seat now if you don’t mind. "

"'Course I don't mind," Nick says, taking his own seat beside him. "So you got sicked up on twice did you?"

Louis nods. "Yeah, but like I said, also got to do a home visit to measure a newborn, and he was so _tiny_ Nicholas, barely half a stone and he had all this hair. His poor mum."

"Why his poor mum?"

"It’s a myth really,” Louis says, stilling his hands, “but it goes that if a baby's born with lots of hair it usually means his mum’s had terrible heartburn whilst she’s been carrying him."

"Think it's true do you?"

"My mum says it is, and she'd know."

“Oh yeah,” Nick says, fumbling with his hair. “She just had twins didn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, already digging in his pocket and producing his mobile, clicking it on and scrolling through it, holding it up to Nick once he’s finished. “Ernie and Doris. Ernie’s the one in the red and Doris is the one in the yellow.”

“They look nothing like you.”

Louis laughs and examines the picture he’s got pulled up, his face softening a bit as he’s studying it. “They really don’t, do they? Take after Dan mostly, I think.”

“But you get on with Dan.”

“I do,” Louis says, setting his mobile down on the bench and looking over at Nick. “Thought it’d be weird because he’s not much older than me, but Mum’s happy, and they’d kinda so in love it’s a bit gross really, so...it’s alright. _I’m_ alright.”

Louis is studying _him_ now, and it really feels like he ought to be saying he’s alright too.

And right now, on this bench not too far away from the Turing statue, he really thinks he is.

Or that if he isn’t quite, then he might soon be.

“I’m on the radio,” he says, because that seems like as good as any place to start.

“Are you?” Louis asks, his eyes round.

“Yeah,” Nick says, studying his hands before returning his attention to Louis. “Mairead, that’s Arlo’s mum, helped me get a job at the Beeb, so that’s where I am now.”

“That’s right,” Louis says, slouching ever so slightly. “With Liam.”

“Yeah,” Nick says, laughing just a bit. “Weird isn’t it?”

“Say it is,” Louis says, going back to running his hands up and down his thighs. “He kept saying he had this shiny new job at the Beeb and not once did he say who exactly he’d be working with.”

“Can have a word with him tomorrow if you like.”

Nick will too, absolutely.

“Rather have one with him tonight if I’m honest,” Louis says, stopping his hands around about his knees and gripping at them.

“Help you out if you want. Been told I’m handy with a comment.”

“And who told you that?”

Nick can’t help the way his cheeks flush with Louis’s attention so keenly on him, and he clasps his hands, wedging them between his thighs. “Harry,” he says, “the one Aimee told you about. Says I do go on, always willing to jump in whether I’m needed or not.”

“He wouldn’t,” Louis says, almost deadpan, adding after a bit and a little softer, “how is Aimee?”

“She’s, uh, she’s good,” Nick says, studying his thumbs, remembering how she’d talked him down. “Told her I was meeting up with you today actually.”

“Yeah? What’d she say?”

“Said she couldn’t believe you became a nurse.”

“Oh,” Louis says, and when Nick looks over at him, he’s studying his own hands.

“Told her I could though.”

Louis’s head pops up.

“Believe, that is, that you went and became a nurse.”

“Did you?” Louis says, looking a bit flushed himself and messing with his fringe.

“Yeah,” Nick says, looking in Turing’s direction. “Kind of always did do what you wanted, so it wasn’t a stretch really, you ending up a nurse like you said you would.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Louis grinning down at his feet before he hears him clear his throat and say, “Thank you Nicholas. Nice to know you’ve got support even if you don’t know it.”

“Don’t be odd,” Nick says, gently nudging him with his elbow. “You know I meant it.”

“Did I?” Louis asks, but the expression on his face seems to suggest he did. Or does, rather.

"You did," Nick says, nudging him a bit harder, delighted when he’s able to push out a laugh.

"Alright so I did," Louis says, smiling so hard he’s almost squinting. "I mean, it'd have been nice to know before now honestly, but I guess I can have you convince me in retrospect."

Not that Nick minds, but, "what exactly would that entail?"

"Dunno," Louis says, shrugging his shoulders. "Helping with Liam tonight to start. Have to figure out the rest of it as we go I think."

 _As we go_.

“I am supposed to ask him about the pasta tub,” Nick says, suddenly remembering.

“You are.”

"Could go do it now if you wanted. Get it done."

Louis shakes his head, studying Nick’s face again before looking straight ahead.

"Not yet. Just...not yet.”

“Okay.”

Nick slouches down in his seat and rests his clasped hands on his lap, facing forward himself.

And he’s not sure how long they’d been sat there in silence that’d fallen, with just the rustle of the breeze in the leaves and the distant hum of city life going on in the background, when he hears, “Did you ever…?”

Nick looks up from where he’d been fiddling with his hands, digging a thumbnail into the fleshy part of his opposite thumb. 

Louis is still staring straight ahead.

“Did I ever…?”

Louis looks over at him finally, mouth a bit open like he’s just been startled out of a reverie, closing it and opening it a few times before he seems to settle a bit and says, softly, “It’s nothing. Doesn’t matter.”

“Might,” Nick says, just as softly. It’s just, if Louis is going to ask about evers, especially evers that pertain to _him_ , then Nick thinks he’d quite like to know what those evers are.

“It really doesn’t,” Louis says, running a hand through his fringe. “It’s just...this is all so much you know?”

Nick knows.

“Five years Nicholas.”

“I know.”

“Five _years_.”

Nick laughs. It is a bit incredible, truly. 

“I know,” he repeats.

“I just,” Louis says, hand still in his hair and a wide, disbelieving smile on his face as he’s looking around the park like he’s just noticed where they are. “I just...I spent...so much time thinking and recently too but now…”

His voice trails off and his hand lands in his lap.

“I guess I just...missed you more than I’d even realised.”

Nick’s heart lurches almost _painfully_.

“Oh Louis,” he says, not even thinking, sitting up straight and pulling him close like he did so very long ago, gusting out a sigh of relief when Louis comes along just as willingly as he’d once done. “I’m afraid I really wasn’t much to miss, but thank you.”

Louis snorts out an almost watery sort of laugh into Nick’s shoulder. “Think I’m to be the judge of that and not you.”

“You’re right,” Nick says, because Louis is and Nick’s spent many hours talking with people who know all about other people and how they feel about things and how they’re _allowed_ to feel what they feel about things sometimes, so yes, Louis is right. “Might have missed you too as it turns out. All my other friends actually like things like beetroot and quinoa and wheatgrass juice, and I didn’t have anyone around telling me it was disgusting and to stay far, far away from it.”

Louis laughs. “You poor dear. Wheatgrass juice sounds _disgusting_. Can’t imagine why anyone’d ever want to drink it.”

Nick holds him a bit tighter. “Supposed to be good for you or summat, but I had it and it was like you said with the carob, scraping the taste off my tongue for _weeks_. Eventually had to resort to an entire bottle of Sauv Blanc just to get it to go away.”

“That’s a strong choice, the Sauv Blanc.”

“It was a big bottle as well.”

“Would have had to have been if it was as bad as the carob.”

Nick nods, loosening his grip just a bit. “But it’s alright now because you’re around and if I’m being talked into wheatgrass juice again you can just come save me.”

He thinks he might feel the tiniest flinch, but it’s so small that he thinks he’s probably imagined it, especially since Louis is saying, “That’s right. Could even walk if I really had to.”

“Suppose you could,” Nick says. “Long as it’s not through anywhere dodgy.”

“Well I suppose I _am_ ready to go have that word with Liam,” Louis says, pulling back a bit. “So I can show you if you like, so you can make sure I’m not going to be walking amongst the dodgy types if I’m going to be coming to your rescue.”

“Planning on coming to my rescue a lot?”

“Don’t know,” Louis says, his eyes almost gleaming. “You think you might need it a lot?”

Nick shrugs. “Probably.”

He does know his friends after all.

“Suppose it’s extra good that I’m close then,” Louis says, giving Nick’s waist a squeeze and sitting back, putting his hands on his knees and standing up.

Serendipitous is the word Nick would choose to describe it.

“Suppose it is,” he says instead, standing up himself and offering Louis his arm, pleased when Louis takes it after only about a second or two of hesitation, more so when Louis holds on tight for the entire walk back to the car park several streets over.

~*~

Liam does indeed turn out to be Liam From Work. 

Not that Nick had really thought he _wouldn’t_ have, but he was willing to entertain the _possibility_ , however small, that there could be two Liams with a boyfriend named Niall (blond, definitely Irish, definitely seems like a good chap) and a housemate who’s not only opposed to socks but to footwear of any sort (Louis having kicked off his shoes the minute they’d gone inside, abruptly flicking the lights on and calling out Liam’s name).

“Hi Liam,” Nick says, brightly, waving at him.

“Hi...Nick,” Liam says, giving Nick a little wave in return, looking at Louis with his eyebrows furrowed.

“Yes Liam,” Louis is saying, his hands firmly planted on his hips. “Seems you work with an old friend of mine and neglected to tell me.”

“I didn’t know he was _that_ Nick,” Liam says, half to his feet.

 _That Nick_?

Nick doesn’t think he’s ever been a _that_ Nick before, and he’s not too sure how to feel about it. Not too sure he _likes_ it, especially if he’s been _that_ Nick for Louis.

Louis, whose hands suddenly drop from his hips as he’s already pushing Nick back out the door.

“Would you look at the time Nicholas?” he’s saying, and no Nick can’t look because he can’t get at his mobile and there doesn’t appear to be a clock in this room that he can see. “Getting late for me I’m afraid, so I’ll just see you out. Say goodbye to Liam and Niall, there’s a good lad.”

“Bye!” Nick calls out over his shoulder, waving again with the hand he’s got free. “Nice meeting you Niall! Tomorrow, Liam!”

He hears a laugh that’s got to be Niall’s and an “Nice meeting you!” that is definitely Niall’s. Liam’s still looking at his feet, although Nick does see him shoot Niall a glance before the door closes and he and Louis are back outside.

“I was supposed to ask him about the pasta tub,” he says, looking down at Louis who seems to be breathing a bit hard. “And then about the not telling us he was our mutual friend or something like that.”

“Ask him at work, yeah?” Louis says, swiping at his forehead, his hands a bit on the shaky side. “I mean, you’ll see him tomorrow so you can ask him then.”

“Okay,” Nick says, because he will - and Fiona will _love_ it he’s sure - but, before he goes, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Nicholas, really,” Louis says, scratching at his eyebrow quite a bit and then stuffing his hands, both of them, into his pockets.

“Are you sure?” Nick says, because he isn’t leaving it. “Because from what Liam said, you might not have been.”

“Heard that did you?” Louis says, glancing down at his feet and wiggling his toes just a bit.

“Have the best hearing in Greater Manchester so of course I did.”

Louis gusts out a laugh and studies his feet for a few more seconds before finally looking up and saying, with the slightest hint of a smile, “You do have impressive ears.”

It actually makes Nick’s cheeks warm ever so slightly. Nick likes being impressive, even if it is just his ears. “Must be all that listening I do.”

“Yeah, probably,” Louis says, nodding. “And about that thing Liam said, it’s...it’s nothing, really. I promise. I mean, it _was_ a thing, but it isn’t anymore I don’t think.”

“As long as you’re sure.”

“I am,” Louis says, his smile growing, and yes, it’s every bit as dizzying under porch lights as it is under fluorescent lights and open sky and streetlights. “Hasn’t been a thing since about nine this morning actually.”

 _Nine this morning_?

Oh.

Well then.

Nick’s cheeks get a bit warmer and then it’s _him_ having to study his feet for a bit.

“Well I’m glad to see you too,” he says, once he’s looked back up.

Louis is practically beaming.

Nick is going to need champagne.

Champagne and Aimee.

He’s sure Ian wouldn’t mind as long as he gets her back by midnight-ish.

And they’re stood there, just kind of goofily grinning at each other when Louis seems to remember something and gets his mobile out, clicking it on and fiddling with it a bit until he holds it up to Nick and asks, “This is still your number right?”

And...it is.

Nick swallows and nods, his mouth entirely too dry to speak at the moment.

“Mine didn’t change either,” Louis says, stuffing his mobile back into his pocket. “Don’t know if you...kept it, but if you did, it’s still me.”

He had, is the thing. He’d thought several times about deleting it, but he couldn’t ever bring himself to do it, and later, when he’d struggle getting out of bed some days, he’d remember Louis and his energy and pull out his mobile to stare at his number, thinking that _Louis_ would get out of bed, _Louis_ would get going, and it didn’t always work, but a lot of the time it did.

“Text you when I get in,” he’s eventually able to squeak out.

Louis’s eyes widen, and he nods, pushing at his fringe a bit, saying, “You better. I’ll have Liam on you if you don’t.”

Nick snorts out a laugh. “Not afraid of Liam.”

“Should be,” Louis says, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorjamb. “He’s got those puppy-dog eyes. Managed to get me to wash his car once by turning them on me.”

That actually seems like it’d be about right. “Did he really?”

Louis nods. “And he had to pick Niall up from the airport and he didn’t have a lot of time to get it clean either, so that might also have been a factor.”

“Such a kind one you are.”

It’s said jokingly, but Nick honestly means it, his mind suddenly flooded with images of Louis five years ago, so earnestly trying to _help_.

“The kindest,” Louis agrees, stifling a yawn, and right, Nick probably ought to get going.

Get going so he can get his champagne and scream down the phone at Aimee until he isn’t fit for work tomorrow.

“Go get some rest Lou,” he says, giving him a one-armed hug that he leans into and then heading toward the steps. “Got to be all bright for the wee ones tomorrow. All cheery when they’re sicking up on you.”

“You are right,” Louis says. “Think I’m gonna wear the Peppa Pig ones my other sister picked out. Not fair if Keroppi gets sicked up on and Peppa doesn’t.”

“Send me a picture then,” Nick says, not even realising what he’s said until it’s out of his mouth and Louis’s eyes snap open. “I mean, not of the sick, but of Peppa. Haven’t ever seen anyone wearing her, so you know...it’ll be interesting...yeah.”

“The toast of Fashion Week to be sure,” Louis says, smiling and resting his head against the doorjamb now. “But yes, I will send you a picture in the morning. You can use it to update your contact on your mobile from that awful one you've probably still got of me in the theatre.”

“Such a pest using the flash whilst people are trying to see a film.”

Louis shrugs. “Even you were young and dumb once Nicholas.”

“Still young thanks.”

Louis’s eyes crinkle as he laughs.

And yes, still dizzying.

“I’m not,” he says. “I am old and my feet hurt.”

“You’re not old. You’re just a bit knackered so I really should be going.”

“If you must.”

They’re still stood there staring at each other, Nick knowing as each second ticks by that he really, truly, ought to be leaving and still somehow unwilling to go, when the door flies open and Niall sticks his head out.

“You two going to stay out here all night or do I need to make up the sofa for Nick?”

“Nicholas won’t fit on our sofa Nialler,” Louis says. “ _You_ don’t fit on our sofa and you’re half his height.”

“Oh look at this one,” Niall says, giving Louis a pinch in the centre of his chest. “He’s got jokes.”

Nick laughs as Louis yelps, batting Niall’s hand away and standing up a little straighter. 

“Right lads,” he says, already taking a step back. “Gonna go so Louis here can get his beauty rest. Text you Lou like I said.” 

“Like you said,” Louis says, nodding and allowing Niall to pull him inside, giving Nick a wave before the door closes.

Nick looks at that closed door for a few moments, and it isn’t until he nearly stumbles over an incongruous flower pot on his way down the steps that he really and truly believes the evening hadn't been a dream at all.

~*~

_I’M IN!!!!_

_HI IN ! I’M LOUIS !_

_HI LOUIS! GOODNIGHT LOUIS!_

_GOODNIGHT NICHOLAS !_


	2. Chapter 2

Nick actually does end up being fit for work the next day, even though he’d spent _hours_ on the phone when he’d got in the previous evening, first with his mum and then with Mairead. He does, however, have to keep nudging Fiona so she’ll stop gaping at Liam, and it’s getting to be a bit annoying really.

“I mean,” she says to Liam for what’s probably the fifth time, "you live with one person and you work with the other one, and you didn’t know they knew each other?”

Liam just shakes his head.

“That’s unbelievable isn’t it?” Fiona asks, looking over at Nick with her eyes wide. “Like in a storybook or a film or something.”

“Definitely like in a film,” Vic puts in, and since neither of them is exactly wrong, Nick doesn’t say anything, just sets about updating Louis’s contact photo with the one that’d been sent over earlier of him in a pair of blue and red scrubs with Peppa Pig all over.

 _Flash_ , Nick had sent back, grin stretching his cheeks.

He’s just got the picture set and is about to put his mobile down when he gets a text.

_flash isn’t an actual slang word Nicholas ._

Nick laughs and checks his time, sees he’s still got a minute.

_How would you know? You hang out with the nursery set._

_don’t think Niall would appreciate being called a member of the nursery set ._

_But Liam would?_

Nick sneaks a glance at him. He’s currently got his head in his hands. Poor Liam.

_maybe if I said . U ask him about the pasta tub yet ? U said U would ._

Nick dutifully sets his mobile down, picks up a green highlighter, scrawling “pasta tub?” in giant letters on a nearby piece of paper he hopes isn’t terribly important, and, waiting until Liam looks up, holds it out for him to see.

Liam gives it a look that can probably best be described as exasperated before meeting Nick’s eyes and mouthing something that looks a lot like _really?_

Nick nods at him and goes back to texting, since he’s still got about thirty seconds.

 _He isn’t well pleased_.

_I'm bothered I'm sure ._

Nick thinks _he_ might ought to be bothered - Liam works on his sound and that’s rather important - but at the moment he really, really isn’t.

~*~

Louis texts him again when he’s got about an hour left to go.

_Katie said you took Arlo’s stickers ._

It takes him a minute to even remember who Katie is.

_P &R Girl is telling fibs. Arlo made me wear them. Can show you if you want._

Because Nick does indeed have a picture of himself wearing the stickers. He’s just not got around to putting it on Instagram yet.

Does Louis have Instagram? Nick can’t remember.

_P &R Girl ? and yes I want to see ._

_Yeah, because she’s like that girl off_ Parks and Rec, Nick sends back, pulling up the picture next and sending that along as well.

 _haven’t seen_ Parks and Recreation .

_Still not caught up myself._

_we could watch it together then ._

And...they _could_.

_if you wanted ._

Nick _does_ want, is the thing.

His mouth might be a bit dry, and his heart might feel like it’s wanting to short out or something, but yes, he really does want.

 _Mine or yours?_ he types out, pressing send before he’s had too much time to talk himself out of it.

_yours I think . unless you fancy watching it with Niall and Liam ._

_Do I want to watch it with Niall and Liam?_

_dunno . Niall might fall asleep halfway thru and snore and Liam will probably ask a million questions so uou'll have to be pausing it all the time ._

_also nice pic BTW . gonna be saving that one ._

Nick laughs, feeling almost pink to the tips of his ears.

 _Mine then_.

_alright . when ?_

When, indeed. 

_When's good for you?_

_whenever really . I'm not the one chatting with Paul Abbott ._

_How'd you even know who Paul Abbott is and that I’ve been chatting with him?_

_Liam told me . was banging on about it all morning ._

_He’s the only one of us who's even seen it,_ Shameless. _Me and Fifi had to sort of hash our way through it. Don't think he noticed though._

Nick _hopes_ he hadn’t noticed.

_we can watch that too then , when I come over to yours . can I have my tea there ?_

Nick’s first inclination is to tell him he can have whatever he wants, but he thinks that might be a bit on the desperate side, so he settles for sending a simple _yes_ instead.

 _wicked ._ _don’t suppose you're busy this evening then ?_

That’s...sudden.

Exhilarating, yes, but also very sudden.

Nick’s going to have to go to the shops.

_or whenever really ._

_Tonight is fine._

At least on the text he’s spared Louis _seeing_ how awkward he really is, how awkward and out of sorts he feels. An almost leftover awkward and out of sorts, certainly, but a present one all the same. 

_sick . seven ?_

_Seven is fine._

Seven is fine.

Everything is fine. 

~*~

"I brought food," Louis says, stood outside Nick’s door at precisely seven o'clock, plastic bag dangling from his wrist.

"Cheers then," Nick says, ushering him through. "You find it alright?"

"Your flat or the food?" Louis asks, stopping in Nick’s living room and looking around.

"Both. Either. Whichever," Nick says, stopping just behind him and trying (and failing) to not wring his hands. He eventually settles for jamming them into his back pockets.

"Yes," Louis says, turning around slightly and lifting an eyebrow before his face settles into a smile. "To both."

And there’s something about that smile that somehow takes Nick down, relaxes him a bit.

There’s still the business with it doing funny things to his insides, but yes, it is...calming. That’s the word for it. 

Calming. 

So Nick smiles back at him, gets a hand in his hair (okay so maybe he isn’t completely calm), and asks Louis what he’s brought for dinner.

"Fajitas," Louis says, cutting, thankfully, right through Nick’s thoughts, sliding the bag off his wrist and handing it over. "Niall made extra, said we could have it."

"Generous of him," Nick says, taking the bag and peeking inside.

"Niall’s a very generous soul," Louis says, nodding. "Gave me the coat off his back once."

"That _is_ generous."

"Liam said it was just because I wouldn't stop whinging about being cold, even though he knows I _hate_ the cold so I don't see why it'd be a surprise, me going on about it."

Nick doesn’t know either, although he does make a mental note to check on his radiator, see that it's working properly.

“Maybe he just wanted Niall’s coat for himself,” he says, shutting the bag and looking up. “Being Niall’s boyfriend and all.”

“Wasn’t Niall’s boyfriend at the time though,” Louis says, sliding his hands into his coat pockets.

Nick laughs. Might need to be telling Fiona this one too.

Poor Liam.

“Was probably jealous then,” he says, indicating the table with a nod of his head and starting in that direction. “I’d have been. Fancying someone and then they’re off giving their coat to someone else.”

“That’s just Niall though,” Louis says, following him. “He’d give his coat to anyone, probably even to you and he’s just met you.”

Nick thinks he might just like Niall quite a bit. At any rate he’s glad Louis had _found_ Niall. Gives him some hope that Louis had been alright during the past five years, even if there’s something that sinks in him like lead at the accompanying _without you_.

“Do you want Sauv Blanc with it?” he says, sitting the bag down a little too heavily and already heading for his wine rack. “Think that’s supposed to go with fajitas and I’ve got a bottle.”

“If it goes with it, sure,” he hears Louis say whilst he’s getting the bottle out, setting it down, and searching for his corkscrew. “Never actually had wine with me tea.”

“Never?” Nick just about always has wine with his dinner. Can’t imagine _not_ having wine with his dinner.

Nick loves wine, and he’d _really_ love it if he could locate his blasted corkscrew.

“You know us lads,” Louis says. “Pints or nothing.”

“Didn’t think you counted as a lad now,” Nick says, giving up on finding it in a drawer and searching amongst the wine glasses. He thinks he might have sat it there yesterday when Aimee came over. “What with the being a nurse and all.”

“I’m really not actually but it’s more because I go to bed at eleven most nights and usually only go out at the weekend,” Louis says. “And Liam and Niall aren’t either on account of how they’re like an old married couple now.”

“How long have they been together?” Nick asks, hands in his hair and absolutely no idea where his corkscrew’s got itself to.

“Forever,” Louis says. “Or three years, one of the two. D’you need help with something?”

Nick finally looks over at him then, and he really hadn’t expected him to be that _close_ , stood there not even a metre off with his hands still in his coat pockets, looking all concerned.

“Can’t find my corkscrew,” he says, lowering his hands and attempting to laugh it off. “Had it yesterday but now it’s scarpered off somewhere.”

“Oh,” Louis says, stepping even closer, getting his hands out of his coat pockets, and then stepping around Nick to examine his countertops. “Where’d you last put it, you think?”

“Usually goes in a drawer,” Nick says, getting a hand back in his hair and gesturing with the other at the drawer in particular where his corkscrew is supposed to be and very much is not. “But it isn't in there. I already looked.”

“We don’t have to have it you know,” Louis says, opening the drawer and peering in it, moving a few of the spoons around, and shutting it, checking the drawer next to it for good measure, all the while apparently heedless at what seeing him back amongst his things like he’d never left is doing to Nick’s head. They’re different things, certainly, and Nick is different, certainly, but still… It’s Louis. Back amongst his things. Louis saying, “the Sauv Blanc. I mean, I wanted to try it, but we can have it another time, once you’ve found your corkscrew.”

Nick doesn’t know if he wants to be sick or scream or shout.

He wants his glass of wine.

He wants to be able to breathe.

And he’s thinking about just going out and buying a damn corkscrew, going out and getting some _air_ , but there’s a voice much like Counsellor Clarissa’s saying _in and out_ over and over again until it’s just the letters right behind his eyes.

And there’s Louis looking at him wide-eyed, Actual lovely Louis stood in his kitchen, _again_ , and he’s not moving, not running, and okay, Nick will breathe.

Because Louis said _another time_ , and Nick will hang on to that like a limpet and he will breathe, wedging a finely shaking hand into his jeans pockets and fingering his inhaler.

_In and Out._

“Supposed to...go real well...with fish,” he says weakly, attempting a smile, nudging his inhaler into the palm of his hand.

_In and Out._

Louis smiles back at him, steps a bit closer. “Like fish. Have to see what I can get Nialler to make that’s got fish in.”

In. And. Out.

One. And. Two.

“Not fair...on him though...is it?” Nick says, taking a puff off his inhaler at last and sitting it down on the counter, not missing the way Louis’s eyes track the movement.

Not missing the way his face falls.

“Nicholas,” he says, frowning. “You should have said…”

“S’alright Louis.” _Please don’t leave._ “Still...got the wonky lungs...is all.”

He doesn’t think he’s been very convincing.

But he can’t have Louis _leaving_ either - he just... _can’t_ because he just got here and they are supposed to be _going places_ \- and while he can’t exactly string a full sentence together just yet and it’s entirely too much right now for a hug, he reaches out a hand instead, feeling an almost overwhelming wave of relief rush over him when Louis takes a hold of his fingers and grips them tightly. His palm’s a bit damp, but Nick really doesn’t care.

“Skip tea for the tellybox?” Louis asks, quietly, but the smile’s back on his face.

Nick gusts out a laugh, nods, rubs his thumb lightly over Louis’s, and shows him back through to the living room.

~*~

They find the corkscrew halfway through the _Parks and Recreation_ pilot episode, lodged not all that deeply in Nick’s sofa cushions.

And before Nick can get up and put it away, Louis grabs it out of his hand and bounds into the kitchen with it. There’s the sound of a drawer opening and slamming shut followed by the sound of running feet, and then Louis is dropping back down beside Nick on the sofa, grinning wide and saying, “There. Now when I come over for fish we’ll know where it is.”

“And when are you coming over for fish?” Nick asks, turning his head ever so slightly where he’s got it rested on the back of the sofa.

“Don’t know,” Louis says, arranging himself so they’re at eye level. “When are you going to cook fish? Be over then.”

“ _I’m_ cooking the fish?”

Louis nods. “Unless you fancy a fish finger sandwich then yes, you are.”

“Can’t remember the last time I had a fish finger sandwich actually. Probably back at my mum’s. Don’t even know if I _like_ fish finger sandwiches anymore.”

“If we’re to be friends again Nicholas, you might want at least want to be on speaking terms.”

“Speaking terms? With a sandwich?”

“Absolutely.”

“But that’s a bit cruel, innit? Be speaking to the sandwich and then eating it? S’like going to the pig farm or wherever or the zoo or summat and being all ‘hello let’s be pals then bam, you’re my dinner.’”

Louis laughs. “Really Nicholas. The zoo?”

“What?” Nick says, unable to help the smile spreading across his face. “Could happen.”

“No it couldn’t,” Louis says, beaming back at him.

“Yeah, suppose you’re right. But I’m still not going to be making nice with my dinner. Feel terrible doing that, like I was a monster or something.”

“Alright that’s fair,” Louis says, looking down and running a fingernail over the weave of Nick’s sofa cushion. “I’ll make you a fish finger sandwich then, but I won’t have you be friends with it.”

“And when do I get my fish finger sandwich?” Nick asks, feeling warm when he sees Louis’s smile grow as he adds, “I mean, you’ve built it up so for me now that I feel like I’ve got to have it soon or I’ll _die_.”

Louis laughs again, still looking down. “Don’t mean to be imposing,” he says, sobering and glancing up. “But tomorrow? Bring it over and everything.”

And now Nick’s not just warm but almost light.

“Think there are at least five seasons of _Parks and Rec_ ,” he says. “So tomorrow is probably best, yeah.”

“There’s seven actually,” Louis says, smile back on his face. “I checked.”

“Looks like you’re going to be over a lot then.”

“There’s eleven of _Shameless_ and that doesn’t even count the U.S. version, which is at about five I think.”

“We’re never going to be able to leave this flat.”

Nick really thinks that might be alright if Louis is willing to stay.

_Stay._

“Doomed to telly and takeaway.”

“Emerging years later with long beards and an empty Netflix queue.”

“Don’t know,” Louis says, rubbing his chin. “Might look alright with one of those dwarf beards like in _The Hobbit_. Very rugged and manly.”

Nick laughs. “Could get it braided. Put flowers in it.”

“It could be your dress beard. Like your dress shoes only it’d be your beard.”

Nick blinks at him for a moment before he loses it, burying his face in Louis’s arm and laughing so hard his stomach starts to hurt.

He keeps trying to stop laughing at it, stop so he can get off of Louis at some point, but everytime he thinks he’s got it, there’s the phrase _dress beard_ and the image of a morning suit with matching ribbons in a Glóin beard and he sets himself off again.

But it’s okay, because soon Louis’s fingers are curling around the back of his head, little points of electricity every one of them, and Nick can tell that he’s laughing too.

~*~

"Are you sure you’re alright?" Louis asks, putting his coat back on as they’re walking toward the door, the two of them having managed to finish the _Parks and Rec_ pilot and almost the entire first season short of one episode before Louis decided he needed to call it a night.

"What?"

They'd been talking about Louis bringing over the fish fingers, where Louis was going to _buy_ the fish fingers since he didn’t have any in, the unlikelihood that the co-op that Nick frequents (located in Whalley Range of all places) would have fish fingers at all, let alone decent ones worth eating, so the question is, at the very least, rather unexpected, rather...chilling.

It certainly makes Nick feel cold all over, like a bucket of ice has been dumped right over his head.

“It’s just if…,” Louis says, voice trailing off as he’s fiddling with the buttons on his coat. “I just...I don’t want you being uncomfortable again, and I thought you might have been…”

Nick’s pretty sure he knows how that sentence ends.

_Earlier._

“I wasn’t,” he says, getting one hand in his hair and tugging at his jeans pocket with the other. “Uncomfortable,” he adds, when he sees Louis’s eyes start to get wide. “It’s just, you know that too much thing you mentioned yesterday? When we were at the park?”

Louis nods.

“Think it was just that really,” Nick says, sticking both his hands into his pockets. “Like, you’ve been down the road this entire time. I do my shopping near your house, and yet we’ve only just run into each other after I ended up doing a favour for my friend and bring her kid into the clinic for his review. Think that might be a lot to take in all at once, don’t you?”

“Don’t forget the working with my housemate,” Louis says, letting go of his coat and sticking his own hands in his pockets.

“And the working with your housemate,” Nick says, rocking forward a bit on his heels. “You know I have to tell Fiona all the stories you’ve been telling me about him.”

“Don’t think I remember who Fiona is, but alright if you must,” Louis says, swaying a just a bit. “Do Liam some good I think, get the piss taken out of him when I’m not there.”

“Sounds like an important job that.”

“Oh it is,” Louis says, nodding. “Don’t just trust it with anyone.”

“I’m flattered, me,” Nick says. He is, can tell by the way his cheeks are warm. “Can send you reports if you want. Make up a little chart with strop levels.”

Louis laughs. “Sounds nice, actually, but I don’t think I’ll be needing a chart. Should be able to tell if he comes home in a mood.”

“Poor Niall. He’d probably be getting the worst of it.”

“Don’t know. He’d most likely just sit him down in front of some Batman film, get him all distracted-like until he forgets.”

_Did Niall ever do that for you?_

“He good at that?” Nick asks instead.

Louis raises his eyebrows in question.

“Niall with the distracting people,” Nick says, getting a hand free and waving it about.

Louis studies him for a long moment before he replies with, “One of the best actually.”

And it’s not exactly the answer Nick really wanted, but it is the one he thinks he actually needed.

“Well that’s good then,” he says, stopping himself before he can tack on a _don’t suppose I could borrow him sometime?_

Because Nick is holding it together, he is.

“It is,” Louis says, turning toward the door but seeming to change his mind at the last second, because he’s stepping forward, stepping close, instead. “I mean, it’s usually just pints and films and hanging off you like a sloth or something, almost like he’s going to soak up whatever’s making you feel bad and turn it into...I dunno light or something.”

Nick thinks he might actually need to borrow Niall after all. Could use a Niall.

But then he remembers that he might just have a Louis, remembers what Louis had once done for him, what Louis did for him earlier, and he’s sure Niall’s amazing, but Louis is lovely, so lovely, and he’d much rather have the Louis.

“Sounds magical.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Louis says, features settling into something soft.

It somehow makes Nick feel even warmer.

“What’s he going to do to me if I do?” he asks. “Unleash The Morrígan on me?”

“Might do,” Louis says, coming even closer and smiling up at him. “I mean, he might actually _be_ The Morrígan in secret, yeah? Like, by day, he’s Niall, even-tempered librarian who leads Toddler Time on Fridays, but at night, he’s secretly a war goddess, taking the form of a crow.”

“I didn’t know the library had Toddler Time on Fridays.”

Louis laughs. “It’s from 10.30 at the one in Chorlton. You could take Arlo.”

Nick _could_ take Arlo.

“Could,” he says, wedging his hand back into his pocket. “Put it on my calendar and everything.”

“Busy man are you Nicholas?”

“Extremely.”

Louis’s eyebrows lift. “Surprised you were able to fit me in.”

“Wasn’t hard.”

Actually was quite a bit of texting, and he’s probably going to be having some rather unpleasant conversations with several people later on, but no, it wasn’t hard.

“So I don’t have to worry about tomorrow then?” Louis asks, and Nick would be worried if his expression wasn’t mostly sly. “Gonna let me feed you fish finger sandwiches for your tea?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for _anything_ ,” Nick says, meaning it.

And he’s sure that whenever he gets around to messaging Aimee back, at least _she’ll_ understand and might can help him talk the others down.

“And we can have your Sauv Blanc with it.”

“It is supposed to go with fish. Don’t think it matters if it’s in finger form.”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Louis says, and he’s gone back to studying Nick’s face before the seriousness slides off and is replaced instead by a dizzying smile.

Maybe one day they won’t be so dizzying, the smiles, but it isn’t as...troubling as it might have once been.

No, not troubling at all.

“Guess we will.”

“Seven still alright?”

“Of course.”

“Wicked,” Louis says, taking a step toward the door. “So I’ll be ‘round at seven then, ready to blow your mind with me sandwiches.”

“Looking forward to it,” Nick says, deciding that he might ought to be opening the door for Louis so he _can_ leave, so he sets about doing just that, stepping around Louis and resting his hand on the handle. 

“You will be _amazed_ ,” Louis says, once Nick’s got the door open, pausing just on the threshold. “I promise.”

Nick laughs. At this point he’d even pretend to be amazed if it’d make Louis happy, keep him around. “I imagine there’ll be words if I’m not.”

Louis nods. “Veritable _dictionary_ of words. Might chuck in the thesaurus too, cover me bases.”

“Could just smack me ‘round the head with the OED.”

“Could, except Niall says it’s massive so I’d probably just have to bury your face in it instead.”

“So long as you pick a good word to bury my face in I suppose that’s alright. Won’t mind so much.”

“Be thinking of a word then,” Louis says, stepping into the corridor at last. “Text it to you once I figure it out.”

“You do that,” Nick says, resting a hand on the doorjamb. “And when you get in, like you do.”

“Yes alright Nicholas,” Louis says, stifling a yawn and giving him a bit of a wave. “Will text, will text.”

“Make sure you do,” Nick says, waving him off, peeking at him a couple of times as he’s walking down the corridor and sticking his tongue out at him when he turns around, feeling something that’s a lot like _fluttery_ when Louis laughs and makes a face at him before running the rest of the way to the lifts.

He shuts the door once Louis is truly out of sight, sinks down onto the floor and buries his face in his hands to keep from shouting or something, because it is getting on ten o’clock now and he’s sure Mrs Spiegelman down below wouldn’t appreciate the shouting at this hour.

And that’s where he stays, up against his door, head in his hands, until his mobile pings with a text sometime later, a word ( _IN !!!_ ) and a picture of Louis doing some hand gesture Nick remembers being popular in the 90s.

 _LOUIS!!!_ he sends back, saving the picture and standing up, locking his mobile and cradling it to his chest, then heading over to the sofa and curling up on it, dragging an afghan Harry’d made for him across his legs. He clicks off the lamp and, despite the early hour, for him at least, falls asleep with the TV still on, _Parks and Rec_ paused right where they’d left off.

~*~

_kvell_

Nick’s ignoring his paperwork again when the message comes through.

He stares at it for a good long time, even holds his mobile up to the light and tries looking at it from several different angles before giving up and sending back _Kvell?_

_yes . kvell ._

_What’s kvell?_

_your word ._

Nick’s...word.

Barely over twelve hours since Nick has seen him, and Louis has already got him his word.

_What’s it mean?_

_not telling_

Alright fine. Nick will go look it up.

So he does, entering it right into Google and tapping the return key with a flourish.

He isn’t at all prepared for what he sees.

Makes his heart stutter a bit, it does.

Because kvell, according to Google at least, is a verb of North American extraction meaning “feel happy and proud.”

And Nick...doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with that.

The immediate thought, of course, is to go latch onto Fiona and show it to her and bother her for a bit asking what it _means_ , because he’s sure it means _something_ , only it could mean so many things, and he doesn’t want to be getting it wrong.

But at the same time it feels like it’s _his_ , his to suss out, and he’s got until seven to do that, so it’s fine really.

 _you like it_?

Or maybe not.

But...he did. He knows that much. He _did_ like it.

_Of course. Think it’s my new favourite word, kvell. Gonna be using it in all of my sentences from now on._

_you do that Nicholas_

_Will, thanks. Might even make you kvell I’m so good._

_you might_

_Louis._

_?_

_You’re kvelling right now aren’t you?_

_ahahahaha fuck off . see you at seven ._

_That’s right. Gotta make me kvell with your sandwiches._

_Nicholas_

_Yes?_

_do be a dear and fuck off already ._

Nick laughs, and because he can’t resist just _one_ more types out and sends, _Your mother wouldn’t kvell if she knew you were using such language._

_hang the sandwiches . I’m burying your face in the OED RIGHT NOW !!!_

_But how am I supposed to kvell on account of your sandwiches later if my face is in a book?_

Okay, maybe more than one.

_gonna take it out of the book , aren't i ?_

_I’d kvell if you did._

Or two.

_omg i hate you ._

_That doesn’t make me kvell._

Or three.

_I’m going to work now . let me know when you’re quite finished ._

_Your work ethic makes me kvell._

Or four.

Louis’s response is nothing but a series of exclamation marks.

And alright, Nick probably is finished, or ought to be finished anyway, since he’s hurting behind his ears from laughing so hard, and speaking of work, his is still flatly refusing to do itself, so he sends Louis a _Thank you for my word. I really did love it_ before sitting his mobile down and picking up a biro, twirling it between his fingers and trying to decide on what he’ll be tackling first.

Except when he sees the simple _:)_ come through from Louis, he can’t help but go bother Fiona for at least twenty minutes about it, first making sure that Liam is absolutely _not_ around and then scarpering back to his desk the instant he appears in sight.

Because Nick is dignified. Of course he is.

~*~

Nick’s already had one glass of wine and is working on his second by the time Louis shows up that evening.

“Didn’t want to wait Nicholas?” Louis asks, sitting down a couple of shopping bags on Nick’s counter and very pointedly raising his eyebrows in Nick’s general direction before turning his attention to his bags and beginning to pull out their contents.

Nick just shrugs. It’s the truth innit? He _had_ been nervous, because he’d decided around five that _kvell_ wasn’t a little thing, no, not at all a little thing, and the Sauv Blanc’s taking the edge off, it is. He’ll offer Louis his glass in a minute, he will, but right now he’s got to watch him show off everything he’s got.

Because that’s absolutely what he’s doing, holding everything up and making a big show of pointing it out to Nick.

Box of Birdseye 100% cod. “Fish fingers.” 

Tub of Beautifully Butterfully spread (Nick’s arteries are already shrieking in protest). “Butter.”

Jar of Bramwells. “Tartare Sauce.”

Nick makes a face at that one. “Don’t like tartare sauce.”

Louis pauses digging in his bag and gapes at Nick for what’s, like, an entire minute. 

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t like tartare sauce,” Nick repeats. “It’s too much like...mayonnaise, only with bits in, and I _hate_ mayonnaise.”

“Are you sure it’s because it’s like mayonnaise and not because it’s got an actual fat gram?”

“Think so.”

“Well alright,” Louis says, sitting the jar to the side. ‘I mean, I still think you’re a heathen for not wanting the tartare sauce, but I suppose I’ll let you get away with it this time.”

And Nick’d let it go at that, but…

“You can put it on if you want.”

Louis is frozen with his hand gripping what looks to be a loaf of bread. 

“Really?”

“Sure,” Nick says, sitting his wine glass down and finally moving to get Louis his. “Can’t be a heathen. Won’t do.”

“If you’re sure,” Louis says, sitting down what is definitely a loaf of bread (Everyday Essentials) and fingering the wrapping a bit.

“Got to have it the proper way at least once,” Nick says, pouring the Sauv Blanc out and handing Louis his glass.

And if he’s got to spend an extra hour in the gym tomorrow, he thinks it might just be worth it.

Especially if Louis is going to smile at him like that.

“Alright then,” Louis says, taking his glass and holding it for a moment or two before taking a sip, right away making a face. 

Nick laughs, picking his glass back up and clutching his shoulder with his free hand.

“How do you even drink that?” Louis asks, even as he’s taking another sip and making yet another face.

“Prefer red actually, but it’s getting warmer so I thought I’d switch over to white. You know, Sauv Blanc instead of the Cab Sauv.”

“If you say so,” Louis says, sitting his glass down and going back to his bags, bunching them up in his fist and pushing them over to an unused portion of Nick’s countertop. “Think I’ll be sticking with me pints.”

“Oh,” Nick says, his arm dropping to his side. “I don’t have any, but I can go get some…”

Louis looks up at him then, eyes a bit wide and his mouth slightly hanging open before his face settles and he’s smiling again. “No you won’t.”

And Nick’s about to protest with an _I will_ , because it isn’t like he minds or anything, when Louis picks his wine glass up again and takes a big swig out of it, grimacing and wiping his mouth. “That...is something else,” he says, putting his glass down once more, “but the way I see it, you’re eating the tartare sauce even though you don’t like it, so I’ll have this...whatever it is because I can’t remember the name right now even though _I_ don’t fancy it.”

“Wine and tartare sauce are two completely different things though.”

Nick’s never known anyone to get pissed off tartare sauce for one thing.

“That is true,” Louis says, looking down and tracing a finger around the rim of his glass. “But,” he adds, looking back up, “I’m well versed in drinking until I like something, and anyway, I’m here with you, not in some dodgy pub or someone’s basement with no windows.”

“If you’ve ever been in either of those then I’m going to be highly upset.”

“I...just the last one, really.”

Whatever buzz Nick had had off the wine is fading, and fast.

“Louis…”

“You were young and dumb once too Nicholas.”

And he had been. There’s no denying that.

“Suppose you’re right,” he says, setting down his glass and rubbing at his forehead.

“It was just the once,” Louis says, and under his hand, Nick can see his feet get closer and clearer until all he can see is the Stone Roses tee he’s got on under his hoodie, the one with the lemon. “And Niall was there and Liam and…”

“You don’t have to explain Louis,” Nick says, dropping his hand and meeting Louis’s gaze. “And I was, like you said. It’s just…”

_Someone could have hurt you._

_And I wouldn’t have been there to stop it._

_Wouldn’t have been there like I was once._

“It was alright Nick,” Louis says, and he must be serious since he isn’t calling him _Nicholas_. “I learned, see? Ever since that night when you said…”

“Said a lot of things that night.”

“You did,” and when Nick finally looks at him, he’s so smiling and so soft. It almost makes Nick feel weak in the knees, makes him think _so that’s what they mean by that_. “And I listened, I promise.”

“Better have done,” Nick says, smiling back down at him.

Louis laughs and makes like he’s about to grab Nick’s shirt or something before pulling his hand away at the last minute and sticking it in his fringe instead. “And what’d you do if I hadn’t?”

“Don’t know,” Nick says, propping his hands up on the counter behind him. “Probably wouldn’t let you be feeding me fish finger sandwiches for a start.”

“Can’t have that,” Louis says, and he’s still so...close at this point that it’s all Nick can do to keep from shivering.

 _Not like this_.

Because Nick’s a bit off his head, and he _wants_ , God and whoever else _knows_ he does, always has really, but just...not like this.

But Louis is looking at him rather like _that_ , and Nick is only human, and he figures maybe it won’t be so much if he just...hugs him instead.

Yeah, that might be alright.

So he pulls Louis close, pulls him tight, and there’s an awful second when he can _feel_ Louis’s hands hanging in the air, but then they meet around the small of his back, and that’s when he can breathe again.

“You alright?” Louis asks, fitting his head into the crook of Nick’s neck.

Nick nods, shutting his eyes. “Sorry,” he says, after a minute and mostly to Louis’s hair, “been an interesting couple of days.”

Louis gusts out a laugh. “Can say that again.”

And alright.

“Been an interesting couple of days.”

Louis squawks, and when they break apart, Nick gets a jab to the belly.

“What?” he asks, putting a hand over where he can still feel a bit of _fire_. “You said I could say it again.”

“Not _literally_ you arse,” Louis says, smiling wide and fluffing his fringe. “Don’t even know if I want to be making you a sandwich now.”

“But you _promised_ ,” Nick says, pouting as hard as he can. He’s even able to get the bottom lip out.

“Yeah well that was before you decided to be a tit.”

“Not a tit. Where’d you even get _that_ idea?”

“Probably off you being a tit.”

“Am not a tit. You’d know if I was being a tit.”

“Would I?” Louis asks, not even lingering around for Nick’s response, digging instead through his cupboards.

“You would,” Nick says, getting another mouthful of Sauv Blanc before he swallows and asks, “Looking for something?”

“Need something to grill the fish in don’t I?” Louis says, looking in another cupboard without even shutting the doors on the first two.

“So I do get my sandwich then,” Nick says, yanking out the drawer under the cooker and dislodging a baking tray with an awful clatter and examining it to make sure it’s clean, seeing as how he can’t remember the last time he actually used this particular one.

“Did promise to make you _kvell_ ,” Louis says, taking it from him and examining it himself, wiping it off a bit with the sleeve of his hoodie.

“That really was a great word you know,” Nick says, reaching up to get his wine glass and settling back down on the floor, leaned up against his cupboards and watching Louis work.

“Was word of the day actually,” Louis says, shooting him a quick glance as he’s fiddling with the dials on the cooker. Preheating or something if Nick had to guess. 

“Was it?”

If there’s anything else coming up that’s a little too much, then Nick thinks he’d really like a warning, thanks.

“Oh yes,” Louis says, opening the box of fish fingers and setting them down neatly on the baking tray. “Not the OED Word of the Day, mind, because I didn’t like that one, but there was another Oxford Dictionary that had _kvell_ as its Word of the Day, and I liked it, so I picked it instead.”

“Did you?”

“I did,” Louis says, ripping open the loaf of bread next and once again rummaging in Nick’s cupboards, eventually pulling out a couple of plates and setting pieces of the bread on them, then digging into a couple of drawers before he comes up with a butter knife and rests it atop the Beautifully Butterfully.

“Wise choice that,” Nick says, raising his wine glass to him and taking another mouthful, sitting it back down by his hip and resting his head against the cupboard door.

“Pleased you think so,” Louis says, leaning against the cooker and crossing his arms, knocking one ankle over the other and facing him.

“Was kvell actually.”

“Were not.”

“Was so, and you don’t get to pick if I was kvell or not so ta.”

Louis freezes where he’s just turned and picked up the fish fingers and looks over at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

And Nick feels like he’s been doused in ice water again, but he’s here and there’s no going back from it, so he just shrugs, has another swallow of Sauv Blanc, and says, a bit quietly, “You don’t.”

Louis looks at his fish fingers and then at Nick and back at his fish fingers before stepping back and shoving them into the oven, slamming the door shut, and plopping right down onto the floor.

“Who’ve you been talking to?” he asks eventually, all narrowed eyes.

“No one.”

 _Clarissa_.

Lovely Clarissa. Nick needs to make sure he’s got her right address, send her a card sometime.

“Are you sure?” Louis asks, propping himself up on one arm. “Because it sounds like you’ve been talking with someone.”

“Haven’t.”

And Nick _hates_ lying - he’s always such rubbish at it too - but he really doesn’t want Louis knowing about Clarissa just yet.

Not...just yet.

And so, in the interest of changing the subject, he indicates the cooker with a nod of his head and asks “How long?”

“How…” Louis says, studying him before looking at the cooker and saying, almost with a defeated sort of sigh, “Few minutes. And then I have to flip them and cook them for a little bit longer.”

“Then what do you have to do?”

“Spread the butter on the bread.”

“Then what?”

“Put the fish on the bread.”

“Then what?”

Louis huffs out a laugh and studies Nick’s knee where he’s been nudging him.

“The tartare sauce.”

“My favourite, the tartare sauce.”

“Liar. We’ve discussed this.”

“You’re right. But I have Sauv Blanc.”

“Yes, yes, your grape juice.”

“You know hops are flowers, right?”

“Did not actually, but thank you for telling me.”

"You're very welcome. Then what?"

"Smash it down altogether."

"That’s it?"

"Cut it into corners."

"Anything else?"

"Eat it."

"Might be able to manage that I think."

"Sincerely hope you do, since I'm doing most of the work."

"Just this once though," Nick says, drumming his fingernails on the side of his wine glass as he’s trying to think and talk at the same time.

"Why's that?" Louis asks, tugging at the seam of Nick’s jeans when he doesn't answer right away.

"Have to cook for you next," Nick says, watching Louis’s fingers as they’re still pulling, frowning a bit when they stop.

"And what are you going to be cooking for me Nicholas?" Louis asks, with a bit of a sly grin.

"Well it’s got to be something healthy. Lots of green things I think."

“Green things.”

“Yeah, like maybe some kale, some spinach, maybe a bit of broccoli.”

“I’m not eating broccoli.”

“The Rock says it’s Nature’s toothbrush.”

“Well good on him but I’m not eating it.”

“Well what will you eat then? Name the thing you will eat, Louis, and I will make it for you.”

Louis shrugs and starts picking at Nick’s seam again. Nick finds that he really doesn’t mind, that it might just be a bit of alright.

“Don’t know really,” Louis says, glancing over at the cooker and then at Nick before concentrating back on his hands. “Like, I’m easy most of the time. Have me meat and potatoes and I’m good, sort of thing.”

“Meat and...potatoes,” Nick says, looking around his kitchen, which is admittedly lacking in both meat and potatoes and a lot else at the moment. He really does need to get to the shops, hasn’t quite managed it yet.

“Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew.”

Nick laughs. “Didn’t take you for a hobbit.”

Louis grins. “That’s Niall actually. If anyone is an actual hobbit, then it’s definitely Niall.”

“He always on about second breakfast then? Elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon Tea?”

Louis gives his seam a particularly hard pull. 

“Dinner? Supper?”

“Didn’t know you liked those films Nicholas.”

“Don’t really,” Nick says, pausing to have another sip of his wine. “But my friend Harry is a _massive_ fan of them, so I’ve seen them, like, a hundred times. Could probably quote them from memory now if I’m honest.”

“Alright,” Louis says, standing up and retrieving his own wine glass before sitting himself back down in his previous position. “Quote me something then.”

Nick has to clear his throat and have another, larger, swallow of the Sauv Blanc before he says, “'The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.'”

“See what?” And Nick knows that’s not quite the line, but he’s not correcting Louis, not if he’s going to be doing this bit with him.

“'White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.'”

“'Well that isn’t so bad.'”

“'No,'” Nick says, looking down and fiddling with his empty wine glass, twirling it by its stem. “'No, it isn’t.'"

“Always did like that part.”

Nick looks up, watches Louis finish off _his_ glass and set it back down.

“I mean, I know it’s supposed to be about death,” Louis adds, getting up, wrapping a tea towel around his hand, and taking the fish fingers out, flipping them over using his hands, and sliding them back under the grill, pushing the oven door closed with his hip before grabbing the Sauv Blanc bottle and returning to the floor. “But it’s like, also about not being afraid, isn’t it? Like, you might be bound somewhere, somewhere that’s frightening even, but it’s really not so bad as you think it is.”

“I just thought it sounded nice,” Nick says, letting Louis refill his glass and setting it back down on the floor between his legs. “Poetic-like.”

Louis gives him a look as he’s filling up his own glass. “Honestly Nicholas,” he says, setting the bottle down, “give you a next-level interpretation of something I like an awful lot, and what do you do with it? ‘Oh I thought it sounded nice.’ You sound like my nan when I was telling her about why the Green Ranger was better than the White Ranger because he had more of a heart and she was all ‘that’s nice dear.’”

“But the Green Ranger _did_ have more of a heart,” Nick says, well interested in talking over the ugly feeling trying to spring up, definitely trying to talk over the silence before it can settle. “And he had the Dragonzord. Nothing’s better than the Dragonzord. I mean, Tigerzord. What even was that?”

“Really,” Louis says, nodding into his glass, taking a sip, and setting it down. “Go from the Dragonzord to the Tigerzord. I’d have been so angry.”

“And then there’s no way you’re keeping that white suit clean either. Be having grass and guts all over.”

Louis laughs. “Not guts Nicholas. You remember how they used to fight. Like in those bad karate films with the dubbing that was always off.”

“That’s right. Weren’t there lasers? Seem to remember lasers being there.”

“Not sure. Might have been. May need to go rewatch.”

“I can put it in our queue.”

“Think you should,” Louis says, rubbing his chin.

“Will then,” Nick says, reaching up and behind himself, flapping his hand about to see if he can get at his mobile that way, but more than willing to take it off of Louis when he gets up and hands it down. “Which one am I putting in the queue?” he asks, pulling up the Netflix app and searching, only to come up with an entire page of Power Rangers.

“Just the original series I think” Louis says, tea towel back around his hand as he’s retrieving the fish fingers that Nick really hopes are cooked all the way and setting the tray down on the hob. “And the film if they’ve got it.”

“No film,” Nick says, going back to his mobile, looking for it and not finding it. “Got about 60 episodes of the original series though.”

“That’ll keep us busy for a while,” Louis says, and out of the corner of his eye Nick can seeing him slathering butter on bread and then trying to pick up the fish fingers with his hands, mostly dropping them on the bread as opposed to setting them down neatly.

“I’ve got a spatula,” he says, adding Power Rangers to their Netflix queue and standing up, setting his mobile down on the counter, and trying to remember where he put said spatula. “Somewhere.”

Louis laughs and half-tosses another couple of fish fingers down. “Not got time for a spatula Nicholas.”

“But you’ve got time to burn your fingers.”

“Seems that I do,” Louis says, wiping his hands off on his jeans and reaching for the tartare sauce, making Nick open the jar after his first two attempts fail and, picking up the butter knife, placing an entirely too heaping amount of it across both sandwiches.

Nick’s probably going to have to spend _two_ extra hours in the gym. Whenever he next _goes_ to the gym, which, he's still hoping that’s tomorrow.

Louis sets the other piece of bread atop his...masterpiece, and Nick’s really expecting him to smash it down like he said, only he hands Nick the plate instead.

“Thought you were supposed to smash it,” he says, examining it and looking up at Louis.

“Haven’t washed me hands since I got here,” Louis says, smashing down his own sandwich. “And I thought you might not like it if I got them all over your food.”

“But you already used your fingers to pick up, well, the fingers,” Nick says. And it’s probably disgusting, but he thinks he’d rather have Louis smash down his sandwich if it means he won’t get butter all over his hand. He really does not want butter all over his hand.

“I know, and I’m sorry. Just remembered,” Louis says, still not looking up as he’s wiping his hands off on Nick’s tea towel this time and getting out a knife, cutting his sandwich into four pieces.

“So you might as well smash this one too,” Nick says, passing the plate back over to him. “I mean, probably already got your germs all over it, so a few more won’t hurt.”

“Don’t have germs Nicholas,” Louis says, accepting Nick’s plate after he’s been poked in the arm with it a couple of times. “Believe me,” he adds, getting a paper towel and smashing down Nick’s sandwich for him, cutting it up and passing the plate back over, “wash me hands very thoroughly when I get in everyday. Even get up under my nails and everything.”

“That’s quite a lot.”

“Used to get sick all the time when I first started,” Louis says, picking up his plate and retrieving his wine glass from where it’d still been sat on the floor. “Learned to wash me hands a lot after that.”

“Suppose you would,” Nick says, retrieving his own glass from the floor, deciding he’ll be back for the bottle, and following Louis into the living room, dropping down beside him on the sofa, setting his glass down, and studying his plate. “So this is it then?”

“Yep,” Louis says, balancing his plate on his lap. “Your first experience with the marvel that is my cooking.”

“Well I saw you make it so I don’t think I’m going to die or anything.”

“Of course you’re not going to _die_. Who dies from fish finger sandwiches?”

“Somebody might.”

“But not you so eat your sandwich.”

And Nick does, picking up one of the corners and, figuring why the hell not, taking a big bite out of it.

“Oh my god,” he says, once he’s swallowed.

“Nice isn’t it?” Louis says, beaming and, Nick thinks, a bit flushed.

“Nice is a word, yes,” Nick says, cramming the rest of the corner in.

God, he’s missed butter.

He’s going to regret it later, sure, but right now, right very now, he thinks it might just be the best thing he’s ever eaten.

“Don’t forget your wine,” Louis says, handing him his glass from where he’d sat it down on the coffee table.

“Can’t have that,” Nick says, accepting it and right away washing down the remnants of his food. 

And it works is the thing, the Sauv Blanc with the fish finger sandwich.

He has to tell Aimee. He thinks she’s the one that prefers white over red. He’s probably going to have to buy her a bottle of something or other so she’ll talk to him again, but yes, he will tell her of this meal.

This meal that he basically just _crams_ into his face, shoving sandwich corners in and chasing it with the wine at almost top speed, licking butter off his fingers when he’s done and, setting his plate on the sofa beside him, leaning back with his hands folded across his full (but very happy) stomach.

“Enjoy that did you?” Louis says, looking all amused and definitely flushed, still holding his plate with his untouched sandwich.

“Might have done,” Nick says, reaching over and patting Louis’s arm. “I mean, I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to eat something like that again, like ever, but it was _amazing_.”

“Why can’t you eat something like it again?” Louis asks, fingering one of his crusts.

“Because if I start I won’t stop,” Nick says with a shrug. “And then they’d be needing a quarry or summat to measure me.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“How come?”

“Just...you shouldn’t is all. It’s not...it isn’t kind.”

“Oh,” Nick says, looking down at his hands and then back at Louis. Louis, who’s still frowning at his sandwich. “Won’t do it again. I promise.”

“See that you don’t,” Louis says, poking him in the chest and making grabby hands for the remote. Nick hands it over, and by the time they’re eating cake on-screen, he’s already forgotten to wonder at the entire odd little business just now.

~*~

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

And the only reason Nick even knows that he _had_ fallen asleep is because something’s ringing and it’s jolted him awake.

Something's ringing, his mouth tastes like death, the only light is what’s coming from the telly, and that's definitely not the episode of _Parks and Rec_ they were last watching.

Speaking of they...

"Shit," he hears Louis say. "Time is it?"

"Don't know," Nick says, feeling around for his mobile and knocking his plate off of the sofa in the process, before he remembers it's still in the kitchen. He stands up and right away bangs his knees into the coffee table, shouting a bit because it’d _hurt_.

“You alright?”

“Yeah fine,” he says, rubbing at his left knee since it’d got the worst of it. “Think one of us is ringing though.”

“Probably me,” Louis says, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and scrubbing his hands a bit over his face, leaving his chin propped up on his hands when he’s done. “Niall gets worried sometimes.”

And since it doesn’t really look like Louis is in hurry to get up, despite his ringing mobile, Nick drops back down onto the sofa beside him, leaned forward just like he is, and examining his fingers. “Aimee’s like that too. I mean, they’re all pretty bad for it, but Aimee’s probably the worst.”

“Good old Aimee,” Louis says, dropping his hands and looking almost fondly at them. 

“She’ll be upset if she hears you calling her old.”

Louis huffs out a laugh and looks at him then. “I’ll just tell her it was you saying that.”

“She won’t believe you.”

“She might. I can be very convincing when I want to be.”

 _Yes you can_.

“Just a bit I think.”

“More than a bit Nicholas,” Louis says, pushing at him and then stretching out his arms and legs before flopping backward. “God I’m knackered. Hate when I fall asleep like that. Makes me feel like I’ve been run over with a lorry.”

And Nick’s really about to tell him that he doesn’t have to leave if he doesn’t feel up to it, but he stops himself because _too soon_. He’s not even going to lie to himself and say it wouldn’t be any different from Harry staying over, because he knows it would be. 

It absolutely would be.

“Make you a coffee,” he says instead.

Louis makes a face and shakes his head. “Don’t like coffee much and anyway, imagine it’s late so I probably need to be getting to me own bed. Children to see in the morning you know.”

Nick nods. “Busy day ahead of shoes getting thrown at you I’m sure.”

Louis laughs, standing up and rubbing at his back a bit. “Fridays are _monstrously_ busy actually. Think it’d be Monday but it isn’t.”

“That’s odd,” Nick says, standing up himself. “Think it _would_ be Monday.”

“You would but it isn’t,” Louis says, walking into the kitchen, picking up his mobile, and unlocking it. “It’s midnight, and I’ve….just missed the bus. Nice.”

“Can give you a ride home if you like.”

“You could, but you’re not.”

 _That_ sinks in Nick’s stomach like lead.

Has him studying his feet like his leaden stomach’s gonna come falling out, roll out of his trousers somehow, and clatter across the floor.

“Don’t go looking like that Nicholas,” Louis says, clapping his shoulder and giving him a dizzying smile. And there goes his heart. “Just meant that you’ve been drinking a bit and you’re not driving. I’ll just call Niall.”

“You…you don’t have to,” Nick says, a bit choked still. “I mean, if you wanted, you can just kip on the sofa there.” Nick is so weak. So, so weak. “My friend Harry does it all the time. Surprised he’s not on it now actually.”

“Right,” Louis says, looking at the sofa and then back at Nick. “So you’re saying,” he adds, a bit slyly Nick thinks, “that if I decide to stay and sleep on your sofa, that there’s a chance I’m going to be sharing it with someone at some point.”

“Just Harry really. Everyone else who stays over just piles right into the bed with me.”

“So why’s this Harry so different then?” That’s...not so sly. Almost cross, some foolish part of Nick’s head thinks.

“Cos he’s like an octopus, limbs everywhere. Kicked him out for good after I woke up with his foot in my face one too many times.”

“He have stinky feet then?”

“Very stinky. And he likes to just crash wherever he is, a lot of times not taking his shoes off first, so I’d have a boot in my face.”

“Don’t know if I want to wake up with a boot in _my_ face Nicholas.”

“There’s the bed then.” And oh, how Nick’s voice just did squeak.

So squeaky. He’s a little mouse.

“It’s...been done before.”

Nick nods. Swallows. “It...has, yes.”

Louis gapes at him for about another moment and then his face clears.

“I’m not sleeping in Britney.”

Nick laughs. “Afraid Britney’s long gone, but I can lend you some pyjama bottoms. Got some nice ones with dogs on.”

“I like dogs.”

“Well let’s get you settled then.”

“Sure, text Niall whilst you’re doing that.”

“Alright,” Nick says, waving him off to his texting, striding very quickly down the corridor and almost skidding to a halt right at his bedroom door. Lucky for him he spent the past weekend getting his sheets and the duvet cover washed, so he hasn’t got to worry about that, and his clothes are put up for a change, so yeah, it’s lucky really.

So lucky.

“Niall says you’re coming for dinner at the weekend.”

Nick jumps.

“I am?” he says, hand on his chest to still his pounding heart.

Louis nods and squeezes past, taking off his hoodie, and neatly folding it before having a seat on the bed. “Says he won’t have his best mate run off with some bloke and him not get a good look at him.”

“Protective is he?” Nick asks, trying to remember which drawer he’s got the doggy pyjama bottoms in. They’d been a gift from someone, probably his sister, and he’s not really got around to wearing them yet.

“Very,” Louis says, and out of the corner of his eye Nick can see him studying the room. “Who’s that you’ve got on your wall then?”

Nick looks up and squints at his pictures like he’s just seeing them for the first time. “Which one?” he asks, wedging open a drawer at the bottom, finding himself in luck once again since what he’s looking for is right on top, pulling them out and tossing them in Louis’s direction before standing and closing the drawer with his foot. “Got loads of pictures up.”

Louis shrugs. “All of them.”

“My friends really,” Nick says, studying them all and, finding the one that’s got everyone in, takes it off the wall and hands it to Louis, pointing them out. “So you know Aimee, and right beside her is Ian. The one with all the hair is Harry. Mairead’s the one holding Arlo and Chris is behind them. That’s Pixie with the septum piercing and next to her is George. Daisy’s the one in the Mega Babe shirt and Douglas is the one with the eyebrows.”

“They are rather impressive, those eyebrows, I do have to admit,” Louis says, handing the picture back over. “Not as impressive as yours, mind, but they are something.”

Nick’s glad he’s turned to the wall and started putting the picture back up so Louis can’t see how pink his face is.

“Um, thanks,” he says, busying himself with straightening the picture until it feels like he’s cooled a bit.

“Sure. Just...think I’ll just be getting changed.” 

“Alright,” Nick says, remaining right where he is until Louis has gone into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. And only then does he think he can actually breathe, although he has a feeling he might be wanting his inhaler before the night is out, so he heads into the kitchen to retrieve it. By the time he’s returned, the bathroom door is open, but Louis hasn’t come out yet.

“Everything alright?” Nick asks, sticking his inhaler in his pocket so Louis won’t see.

“You’ve got a Clash album framed in your bathroom,” Louis says, still squatting down in front of it. “I mean, it’s greatest hits album, sure, but it’s framed and in your bathroom.”

“Used to always think Paul Simonon was a very good-looking man,” Nick says, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms. “And you can’t ever go wrong with ‘I Fought the Law.’”

“Say you can’t,” Louis says, standing up and adjusting his fringe. “TATE did a wicked cover of that record a few years back. Sometimes it’s my favourite version.”

“That’s right. Back when they’d ask people for cover requests and make those terrible low quality videos performing them in someone’s flat or summat.”

“Yes!” Louis says, his eyes bright. “Like that ‘Kiss Off’ cover where they're in someone's kitchen and they’ve got the drum sat on the cooker and Noah’s playing bass in the sink.”

“I was so angry when he cut his hair.”

“I was so angry when I found out he got fired.”

“But they all get on now I think. You can tell by how they are on Instagram.”

“True. And Adrian seems like an alright sort. Did you know they’re playing here next Wednesday? Me and the lads are going.”

Nick...did know that.

“Yeah, actually,” he says, voice a little thick on account of how dry his mouth is. “Supposed to be going with Harry. His, um, his old band’s opening up for them.”

“Wicked. We should all meet up.”

“Sure, if you want.”

“Of course I want Nicholas,” Louis says, shouldering past him back into the bedroom and setting his folded jeans atop his hoodie. “Or I wouldn’t have said. Where do you want this at?”

“Anywhere’s fine.”

“Alright,” Louis says, sitting them down neatly by the wall and turning to the bed. “Still on the left?”

“Yep.”

“Never were right.”

Nick turns and glares at him. “Hey...”

“I’m joking, I’m joking,” Louis says, and he’s definitely laughing as he’s flipping the duvet back. “See you didn’t get rid of the hedgehogs.”

Nick had certainly _thought_ about getting rid of them, but much like Louis’s phone number, he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.

“Well they’ve all got names now so I couldn’t.”

“Do they?” Louis asks, climbing into bed and pulling the duvet up, turning on his side and working the duvet a bit more so that it’s almost over his head.

Nick laughs. “No.”

Louis rolls his eyes. “Go get changed you tosser and come to bed. Some of us have to get up early in the morning, and if you don’t come along soon I’m making you sleep on your own sofa.”

“How are you gonna make me sleep on my own sofa?”

“Don’t come to bed right away and you’ll find out.”

“Alright fine, just...let me get changed and I’ll be along.”

“There’s a good lad.”

Nick flips him off, and before the bathroom door’s fully shut, he’s sure he can hear Louis laughing.

~*~

“Thanks for letting me stay like this.”

Nick’s just clicked the lamp off, plugged Louis’s mobile into his charger so it won’t be dead when his alarm goes off in a few hours, and he’s about settled when Louis wiggles a finger out from under the duvet and nudges him in the shoulder with it.

And there’s something a bit retorty-like on the tip of his tongue, but all that comes out instead is, “Anytime.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Wicked.”

Nick’s glad it’s too dark for Louis to see his face, see how ridiculous he’s got to look with this smile on it.

“Goodnight Old Friend Louis.”

Louis laughs, pokes him again in the shoulder, lingering just a little bit, and then pulls his hand back.

“Goodnight Old Friend Nicholas.”


	3. Chapter 3

When Nick wakes up the next morning there’s a note literally stuck to his forehead with a plaster. He’s able to peel it off without it hurting - it must not have been pressed on too hard - and he has to hunt for his glasses before he can read it, but once he does he sees it’s only a single word.

Pendulous.

_Pendulous?_

Why is he being left a note with just _pendulous_ on it?

And since Louis is very much nowhere around, judging by the distinct lack of a Louis-shaped lump next to him and by the fact that the note’s been stuck to him with a plaster, which, hilarious really, Nick has to assume that Louis is the one who'd left it. 

But why _pendulous_? 

He's still got the note in his hand as he’s stumbling toward the kitchen, and he’s just picked up his mobile and is about to text Louis when it rings, startling him so badly that he drops it, causing the back cover to pop right off and go skittering across the hardwood. He eventually locates it resting against the baseboard, and, snapping it back into place, he turns his mobile on to find he's just missed a call from Aimee.

And because he can’t not, he calls her back right away.

"Hi hun," he says when she picks up.

"Don't 'hi hun' me Nick," Aimee says, which, hello to you too. "Very cross with you right now you know."

He does.

"You've been hiding for almost three days now."

"Haven’t been _hiding_ Aims," he says, propping himself up against one of his cupboards. It might even be the same cupboard from last night. "Been seeing Louis is all."

"Yeah well that's nice and all but if you try to weasel out of King Pin Friday, it'll be your head."

Nick makes a face even though Aimee can't see it.

"And another thing..."

Joy.

"If you don’t bring Louis it will also be your head."

“Louis?”

“Yes Louis. If you don’t bring him 'round it’ll be your head.”

“Why’s it got to to be _my_ head?"

“Not fair to be anyone else’s is it?”

And okay, she might have a point.

“I’ll text him Aims, see what he says.”

“Alright,” Aimee says, and she sounds a bit softer. “So how is he?”

“He’s...he’s really good actually. Fantastic even.”

“Well that’s good isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Nick says, nodding and picking at a loose thread in his pyjama bottoms. “It’s…very good.”

“Think he’s gonna get us our free round?"

Nick laughs and runs his hand through his hair, studying the note sat on the floor in front of him. "God I hope so. Bit tired of getting so close but not quite there."

"I _know_ ," Aimee says. "Still can't believe the closest we've ever got is the first week when Pix knocked down nine pins."

"But she was so pleased."

"She was."

"Is she angry with me? Was supposed to do a pub quiz with her on Wednesday but you know..."

"Yeah, yeah I know. Meeting up with the...well, old friend," Aimee says, and if Nick didn’t know better, he’d say she was about to say something very much not _old friend_. "Haven’t spoken with her actually, although I think we're having lunch later so I can ask if you want."

"Nah I might better do it," Nick says, forcing himself upright. God, his knees hurt. The instant he isn’t busy he might just go get new ones.

"Alright," Aimee says. "Although I will tell her you were disgustingly happy, so that might help a bit."

"Do I really sound disgustingly happy?"

"Not disgustingly no, but you do sound better than you did on Tuesday."

"Was I bad on Tuesday?"

"Not bad, just...out of sorts, really, but you've got it settled I'd say, and we're all gonna see this amazing person who can keep our Nicholas in."

There’s definitely a smile in her voice.

Definitely a smile on his face.

"Been watching the telly. Got up a list and everything."

"He like crap television like you do then?"

"Isn't _crap_. We’ve been watching _Parks and Recreation_ , already finished the first season and now on the second. Gonna watch _Shameless_ next and then the Power Rangers."

Aimee laughs. "Been telling you to finish _Parks and Rec_ for years now. Glad you could finally get around to it."

"Piss off."

Aimee laughs even harder.

"Let me know what Louis says, alright?"

"Let you know soon as I do."

"Alright then my dear. Talk to you soon then."

"Bye darling."

Nick really does love Aimee. He forgot to tell her about the Sauv Blanc and fish fingers, sure, but he loves Aimee, and it isn't like he can’t tell her later.

He shuffles over to his sofa and plops down on it, thinking he'd really like a glass of water but deciding he can't be arsed to get back up and go get one. Especially if he’s got actual sunbeams cutting across his living room. Makes his bare feet feel toasty somehow.

 _King Pin Friday_ , he thinks, scrolling through his contacts and pulling up Louis, staring at his picture for a bit. _You and I and King Pin Friday with my mates._

He really is absurdly looking forward to it.

 _Don't suppose you fancy a spot of bowling do you?_ he eventually sends.

Louis doesn’t respond right away, but that’s alright. He’d said Fridays were busy after all, and Nick’s got a shower to take. 

But he still carries his mobile into the bathroom with him.

Just in case.

~*~

By the time Nick’s finished with his shower and got himself dressed and his hair all nice and done, he’s finally got a response from Louis.

_i am rubbish at bowling ._

Damn. No free round then.

 _We all are_ , he sends back. _Makes it more fun._

_we ?_

_Me and Aimee and Ian and Pixie and George and Harry. It’s our thing on Fridays. Aimee says you have to come tonight._

_won't that make it uneven ?_

And it..might, but Nick’s sure he can drag _someone_ in. Maybe Daisy. Harry'd like that.

_Could but Aimee says it's my head if I don't bring you so you have to come._

_am a bit fond of that head actually so guess i'm in . what time ?_

And if Nick’s going to just focus on that second sentence to keep his heart from exploding, then he’s sure no one would _blame_ him, right?

_Starts at six but we don't get there until half past._

_alright . where ?_

_All Star Lanes, off Deansgate._

_got no clue where that is ._

_Near the Albert Hall._

_right . meet you there then ?_

_If you fancy sparing my head, then yes._

_do fancy . see you at half six ._

And Nick’s about to put his mobile down and go make himself a coffee when he remembers, and, picking it back up, he types out _pendulous?_ his heart hammering a bit as he’s pressing send.

_word of the day :)_

Nick’s heart might be hammering a lot.

_Thought kvell was my word._

_it is . just thought you should have another ._

Nick’s heart might just be exploding after all.

_Alright. So what's pendulous?_

He isn’t expecting Louis to tell him, so it’s a bit of a shock when he does.

_pendulous is your face if you're sad i left this morning and didn't tell you ._

In his own way of course.

_Found my note though so not sad. And very clever, the plaster._

_glad you liked it . took me ages to find one in your flat ._

Nick hadn’t even known he'd _had_ plasters. He’d thought he was out.

_Did you leave them where I can find them later?_

_no actually but they’re in your pantry if you're wondering where they are ._

And that is helpful, but...

_What were you doing in my pantry?_

_wanted to see if you had any cereal . you don't BTW ._

_Don’t eat cereal._

_i know . saw the granola with my own eyes i did . what the hell is Chia ?_

_Don’t know actually. Think it’s a seed._

_thought it was a pet ._

_Think the seeds become the pet._

_think you may be right ._

_That’s new._

_fuck off . go buy some coco pops ._

_Buying you cereal now am I?_

_don’t know . you might could use some coco pops . everyone could use coco pops ._

_Get some when I go to the shops then._

_wicked . have to go . newborn !!!_

_Alright. Let me know if this one’s got hair._

_lol . will do nicholas . will do ._

~*~

When Louis shows up at All Star that evening, Nick is already at tipsy and, if Daisy keeps having him finish off her Roller Girls, then he might just be well on his way to _trashed_.

“Hello Louis!” he says, sweeping him up in a hug that he might just linger a bit over. “You’re saving my head!”

“Did say I fancied it,” Louis says, patting at Nick’s shoulder before he pulls away, turning and leaving his arm resting across the small of Nick’s back. So warm it is. “So are you going to introduce me to these lovely people Nicholas? Afraid I've only properly met Aimee before. Hi love."

"Good to see you again Louis," Aimee says, all happy and pleased, and Nick thinks his head might just be spared after all.

“Right, right,” he says, wiping a hand across his face. He’s a bit sweatier than he thinks he’d like to be. “Well, you know Aims. That there with the pizza on his head because he’s lost a bet is Ian.”

Ian waves. Nick waves back. Louis grips him just a bit tighter.

“That’s Harry sat there at the end. Hi Harry do be a dear and get us another round would you? Daisy, she’s the one with the fur coat on in April, is looking parched.”

“That’s my coat actually,” Harry says, clambering out of the booth they’d all been squeezed into, striding over and offering Louis his hand to shake. “Big fan of purple you see.”

“Purple’s a strong choice,” Louis says, shaking Harry’s hand. “Partial to green myself, but purple’s a smashing colour on a coat like that one.”

Daisy actually titters.

“There’s a lad now, getting the lady a drink,” Nick says, shoving Harry in the direction of the bar as best he can. “That’s Pixie over there flailing around to the No Doubt” Pixie flips him off and goes right back to, well, the flailing really “and the handsome gentleman next to her is George.”

“TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT ME!” Pixie shouts, in time with the music, and because Nick’s a bit, or a lot, off his arse, because he _loves_ this record and his friends and because _Louis_ , actual Louis, is here, holding onto him like he means to never let him go, he shouts back, “PIX DARLING SEE YOU I DO!”

Pixie laughs and tips her drink to him.

“And that’s everyone!” Nick says, again with the shouting, gripping Louis about the shoulders just as tightly. "So the big question is, Louis, do you know anything about bowling?"

“Not a thing Nicholas,” Louis says, positively beaming back up at him.

“Do you know a thing about King Pin Friday?” Nick asks.

Daisy and Aimee and Ian and Pixie and George cheer.

“I do not,” Louis says, taking a look around before turning his attention back to Nick, his cheeks flushed.

“Well, how it works is: there’s a red pin, and if it’s in a certain spot - they call it ‘king pin’ position - we call one of the nice people over, and if we get a strike, then we get free beer!” Nick says, shouting at the end and raising his fist as the others join in. And he adds, a bit softer, “except we’re all rubbish at it, so we’re really kind of counting on you to help us get our round.”

Louis huffs out a laugh, and so dizzying he is really.

So always dizzying.

“See what I can do,” he says, focusing on Nick the entire time. “I mean, I’m rubbish myself, but I will try if it gets us a free pint or two.”

“We get a round!” Nick exclaims, to another cheer. “But we’re such rubbish really like I said so it might come down to you whether we get our free pints or not.”

“Don’t think I stand a chance Nicholas."

“But you’re so strong Louis,” Nick says, looking at him. ‘“And if that doesn’t work you can just convince the pins they were wrong.” 

Louis laughs, pulls him closer somehow. “I will try my best.”

~*~

They’re a disaster, every single one of them.

No strike, and every time there’s a red king pin, someone misses.

“I want to go home and see if my bread’s ready.”

Louis laughs and pats Nick’s leg.

It’s not so much dizzying anymore as it is _electrifying_.

“When did you make bread?" Harry asks with a bit of a pout, which, right, used to be a baker didn't he?

Nick’s about to answer when Daisy cuts in with, "We do bread on Thursdays. Nick’s got his days mixed up."

"I didn’t know you made bread on Thursdays," Harry says, still pouting.

"I didn’t either," Louis says, and he doesn’t sound very pleased.

"It...it’s just," Nick sputters out, desperate for an explanation that won't have anyone in a strop.

Luckily Daisy of all people comes to his rescue.

"We do," she says, playing with her glass a bit. "Not just bread but baking things, usually on Thursday. Nick was just busy yesterday, but next week he’s going to do me a quiche."

"I want to make a quiche," Harry says.

"You do like a quiche," Nick says. "Remember when you were seriously considering getting the one that’d gone off? Good times that."

"Yeah," Harry says, laughing. "And you wanted the expensive one."

"Of course I did," Nick says. "It hadn’t gone off, had it?"

"No it hadn't," Harry says, turning to Louis and adding, "What happened was, me and Nick were out one day, right?" Louis nods. "And we decided we'd get a quiche. We like quiche, me and Nick, and there was this place near his that had quiche. It was a...shop. And we're at this shop where they sell the quiche and the guy there is offering us a slice for two quid or we can get one that’s reduced at...I think it was a quid fifty or something because it’d gone off, and Quiche there is like 'I want the expensive one,' making this face, and yeah, we got a two quid slice of quiche each."

"And then you started calling each other 'Quiche' every time one of you was being a show-off," Aimee says, ruffling Nick’s hair a bit, laughing when he starts to protest.

"Spent all morning on that you know," he says, trying to smooth it back into place, only to find he's got the worst, most disobedient hands _ever_. Or maybe it's the hair, unruly, civil disobedience hair, won't be moved. Either way, Nick is tired and droopy-feeling much like his hair is droopy-looking, and if he isn’t going to get to sleep here at the table, which, it doesn't look like he is, then he'd very much like to to go home and sleep there.

"I _do_ know," Aimee says, lifting her drink to her lips and giving him a wink.

Nick buries his (well-nigh flaming) face in his arms just in time to hear Louis say, “Didn’t peg you for _vain_ Nicholas,” followed by an immediate and very loud burst of laughter from all around.

He lifts his head up long enough to say “I’m done with all of you” before burying his face again, which just in time, because there’s a hand on his back that he’s sure is Louis’s judging by the direction it’s coming from, and it’s patting him very nicely.

Very nicely, especially when it stops and just sort of stays there, all warmth radiating down, and Nick wants to go to sleep, and his friends, his friends that he _loves_ , are being the opposite of helpful, cackling at him like that.

“Oh Nick don’t pout,” Aimee says, patting his arm. “We all know that the only person at this table who _didn’t_ spend an inordinate amount of time on their hair today is George.”

“That’s true,” Pixie says, and when Nick looks up, resting his chin on his folded arms, George just shrugs.

“But George never does his hair,” Nick says. “No one in bands ever does their hair. It’s been proven.”

“I do my hair,” Pixie says, fluffing it a bit.

“You’re the frontwoman though,” Nick says. “You don’t count.”

“You two are in a band then?” Louis asks, and because Nick would rather look at him, he turns his head and rests his cheek on his crossed wrists.

“Yep,” he hears Pixie say as he’s watching Louis. “It’s called These New Violet.”

“It’s horribly pretentious,” Nick says. “Art rock. Banging on sheet metal and singing about your trousers.”

“Cover Blues Explosion _once_ and he never lets you forget it,” Pixe says, and Nick thinks he feels what he hopes is an olive land in his hair.

“Couldn’t forget it Pix,” he says, still focusing on Louis, who’s looking down at him, and the _way_ he’s looking is even nicer than the hand he hasn’t taken off of Nick’s back. “It was horrible. My ears were ringing for _days._ ”

“Shame I missed it,” Louis says, in a low tone almost like he’s upset, and _why is Louis upset?_

“No it wasn’t,” Nick says, moving an arm and patting at Louis a bit and almost elbowing him in the face twice before Louis finally takes his hand and moves it to his lap, and forget everything Nick’s ever thought about his heart in relation to Louis in the past couple of days, because this might just be it for him. "They, uh," he manages to stutter out, lifting his head and propping his free arm on the table and resting his chin in his hand, "they decided one night that they'd do these covers of other bands with colours in the name, so of course they had to do Blues Explosion because they've got Blue and Pix and George's band's got Violet. Only they just knew the one song, the one about the trousers, and they were so pissed that eventually it just sort of devolved into this giant noisy mess, making me wish I'd had my headphones with me."

"Thought you'd be well into that actually," Louis says, not so upset-looking anymore and also not letting go of Nick’s sweaty hand. "The noise and calling it music."

"Don't mind that so much," Nick says. "Although I do like a tune to have a bass line and that one most certainly did not."

"Yeah because our bassist decided he wanted to be an investment banker and fucked off that very day," George says. "Took us ages to find his replacement."

"But you found a good one I think," Daisy puts in, and Nick can almost _feel_ Harry’s blush. The poor lad.

"It’s Harry," he mouths at Louis.

"Wicked," Louis says, looking in Harry's direction. "Always wanted to play bass but my hands were too small."

"They're not _that_ small," Nick says.

They really aren't. They’re warm and soft and the slightest bit damp, but they're not that small.

"They were for the bass I was trying to play," Louis says, looking over at him.

“What were you then, like, five?” Nick asks.

“Fifteen,” Louis says, and he’s still looking at Nick and grinning just a bit. “So you were only off by a decade really.”

“Oh a decade,” Nick says, patting at his sweaty, now _very_ droopy, _disgusting_ hair with the hand that Louis hasn’t got. “Not off by much but ten years I was.”

“Piss off,” Louis says, swatting at him with _his_ free hand and then burying his face in his drink.

“Am pissed thanks,” Nick says, catching himself before his head can slide off his hand and land with an unseemly thud on the table.

Way too many Roller Girls apparently.

And cackling friends.

And Louis holding onto him.

So much.

Nick’s afraid he’s gonna wake up Monday like he’s in _Groundhog Day_ or summat and it’ll all have been a dream.

“I can see that,” Louis says, setting his drink down and nudging it away with his forefinger before leaning over and whispering, "Might need to be calling it a night, yeah? Don’t know if I can get your gangly arse home on me own."

" _You're_ taking me home?"

It is so loud.

Loud enough to hush everyone at the table.

But all Nick can see is Louis’s face, and it is bright red.

"Do you not want me to?" Louis asks, and it is so small.

And there is a _yes_ _I want you to_ pounding in Nick's head, but he can’t get it out, and so the silence stretches, until at last Aimee says, "I think that’s perfect actually."

"You do?" Nick asks, twisting around to look at her.

"Yes," Aimee says, with a bit of a hiss on the end, giving him what he knows is a very pointed look that he’s sure he deserves. "He's offering, isn’t he, and you said he's practically your neighbour didn't you?"

Did he?

He can’t remember.

"Wouldn’t stop banging on about it actually," Ian puts in. 

"I wasn't _banging on_ ," Nick says, well aware that probably might have been. "I was just..."

"Excited, we know," Aimee says, smiling at him and pushing at his shoulder, sending him a bit into Louis’s side. Louis's very warm side. "Now go on. Off with you."

"Yes ma'am," he says, giving her a salute and allowing Louis to tug him out of the booth by the hand. He executes the best bow he can in his state, saying "Everyone" and doffing an imaginary hat to them. 

"It was lovely meeting all of you," he hears Louis say as his arm's going about Nick’s waist. "Best be getting this one home then," he adds when Nick tilts rather than leans into him.

“There’s a record called ‘Home,’” Nick says, swaying a bit when Louis turns them and starts steering them toward the door.

“Is there?” Louis asks.

Nick nods and somehow manages to stumble over his own feet. “Big fan. S’got whistling.”

Louis snorts out a laugh. “Massively into whistling are you?”

Nick shakes his head. “Not especially no. But I like it in that one.”

“You can play it for me sometime then.”

“Might do,” Nick says, fumbling a bit in his coat for his mobile before he remembers he hasn’t got his earbuds, remembering just as suddenly the lyrics to that record.

_Home is whenever I’m with you._

And no.

No no no.

If everything’s a bit too much, and it is, then _that_ is entirely too soon.

Entirely. Too. Soon.

He doesn’t even know if it’s accurate, although he suspects that there might be a _yet_.

So, in the interest of slightly switching gears, he says, “Anna Bulbrook used to be in that band. The one with the record called ‘Home.’”

Louis halts for a brief second before starting forward again.

“Was she?” he asks.

“She was,” Nick says. “Think she just helped out with the touring a long time ago, doing vocals and playing the viola and stuff.”

“Wicked,” Louis says, holding the door open with one arm and guiding Nick through with the other. “Can’t believe I’m finally getting to see her, see all of them, on Wednesday. It’s gonna be sick.” 

“Thought they’d be too indie for you,” Nick says, letting Louis lead him up the street. He’s still a bit too off his head to really pay attention to where exactly Louis is taking him, but it’s Louis, so Nick’s sure he’ll be alright.

Louis shrugs. “Got great lyrics though. I always thought ‘Sometime Around Midnight’ was one of the best things ever written. Such a story in that one, and it’s so true.”

“Someone you just had to see even if you knew they’d break you in two?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, softly with a bit of a sigh, adjusting his grip on Nick’s waist. “I mean, not that dramatic. I didn’t think they’d _break_ me or anything, but yeah, there was someone I really, really wanted to see, and I wasn’t sure if it’d be...good seeing them or them seeing me, so I just...didn’t.”

“So what’d you do instead?” There’s an ugly feeling trying to spring up, and Nick very much doesn’t like it. Doesn’t even know what he’d _call_ that ugly feeling, but he knows he doesn’t like it, that’s for sure.

“Worked my arse off, studying and waiting tables until I got my BNurs, and then it was that glamourous life I told you about, getting things pitched at me and going home smelling like sick.”

“Does sound glamourous. Did it work?”

Louis, oddly enough, laughs. “Not at all, Nicholas. Not at all.”

~*~

“This isn’t my house.”

“I know it isn’t,” Louis says, propping him up against the doorframe and digging around in his pockets until he pulls out a set of keys. “You don’t live in a house. You have a flat.”

“So why aren’t we at my flat?”

“Didn’t fancy going to your flat,” Louis says, unlocking the door and grabbing Nick by the arm so he won’t topple over when the door’s opened. “Figure you can find your way back there tomorrow when you’re able to walk a bit straighter.”

That...is sound reasoning, so Nick shrugs, says “alright,” and follows Louis inside, where it’s almost pitch-black.

“Niall and Liam not around?” he asks, holding onto Louis to keep from banging into something.

“In bed probably,” Louis says, and there’s the click of a lamp being turned on. “Did tell you they’re like an old married couple.”

Nick thinks he’d much like to be in bed himself at the moment.

“That make you their wayward son?"

"Kansas? Really?"

Nick’s confused.

"What’s Kansas got to do with anything?"

"What’s..." Louis gives him a very disbelieving look. "Please tell me you’ve heard of a band called Kansas before."

"I...have?"

"Oh my...," Louis says, rubbing his hands over his face before shaking his head. "You know what? You’re very tired, yes, that's it, you’re knackered and needing your rest, so I'll just be showing you to the bed, yeah?"

"Yeah okay."

Nick is still confused.

"It’s upstairs," Louis says, already heading up them, stopping midway and adding over his shoulder, "You should know though that Niall is massively into classic rock."

"Massively?"

Louis nods. " _Massively_."

"And...Kansas...is classic rock."

Louis nods again and raises an eyebrow before turning around and resuming his climb up the steps. "Catch on fast Nicholas."

 _I like the way you call me Nicholas_ , Nick thinks, and it’s alright thinking that, he finds, surprised he's only just decided to think it _now_. 

It's just, he might have missed it. 

Especially since he might have made people stop calling him Nicholas for a bit.

"I’m a quick study," he says, watching his feet as he’s climbing the steps behind Louis. He’s been known to take a tumble or two, although he thinks that's more to do with Harry’s weird flat than his own feet, since that's where most of those tumbles take place.

"Good on you then," Louis says, pausing on the landing and waiting for Nick, grabbing his arm and guiding him down a short, dark corridor. "I'm in here. It’s a bit of a tip, but Liam will tell you it always is so..."

"Just Liam?" Nick asks, momentarily blinded when Louis flicks the overhead light on.

"Just Liam," Louis says, moving a pile of clothes off the bed and onto the floor. "Niall isn't ever bothered. Says if I want to live in me own filth then that’s my call."

"Filth?"

Louis laughs. "Don't go making faces now. I've tidied even though it doesn't look it, and the sheets are clean."

"Do you promise?" 

Nick really doesn’t want to have to fold himself in half to try to sleep on the sofa. It _had_ looked a bit small when he’d glanced at it earlier.

"I do promise," Louis says, placing his hand on his heart and everything. "Can't stand dirty sheets so I end up changing them quite often."

"You did change your duvet," Nick says, flopping down onto it. He really is so very tired.

"Not really," Louis says, sitting down beside him, and there’s a couple of thumps that Nick thinks must be him kicking his shoes off. "It's just that the one with the anchors is back at my mum's. Fiz got my room when I moved out, and she wanted to keep the duvet, and I didn’t mind letting her so..."

"So you got one that matches mine."

It’s not an exact match - this one’s almost lime green and the hedgehogs are skateboarding whereas on Nick’s beige duvet they’re just kind of hanging out - but it’s a duvet with hedgehogs so he thinks it counts.

“Wasn’t _entirely_ the reason you know,” Louis says, flopping back onto the duvet himself, landing so that all Nick can really see of him is a set of eyelashes and his nose. “Zayn helped me pick it out. One of the last things we did before he left.”

“I thought you said he’d eloped though.”

“I did,” Louis says, tilting his head back enough that Nick can see his eyes. 

“So you knew, then, what he was going to do?”

Louis nods. 

“And you didn’t tell anyone?”

“He asked me not to,” Louis says, studying Nick’s face for a moment before returning to his previous position.

“Don’t you think you should have?”

Louis laughs a little and shakes his head. “Wasn’t mine to tell, really, and Zayn promised me he’d call his mum whenever he got settled.”

“But how’d you know if he did it or not?”

“Because he’d been gone about five days when my mum told me that Trisha, that's Zayn's mum, and the girls were going away to France for the weekend. Didn’t take much to figure out why.”

“Did they ever find out that you knew?”

“Yeah actually. Got no end of shit for it either let me tell you.”

"Probably deserved it," Nick says, closing his eyes, yelping after Louis turns with a lot of a rustle and jabs him in the shoulder.

"Did not," Louis says, and when Nick opens his eyes he can see that Louis is right _there_ , so very close that Nick almost doesn’t want to breathe.

"Did," Nick says, and it's really more of an exhale than an actual word.

"Didn’t," Louis says with a smile, and he’s moving his hand like he’s going to touch Nick again - like Nick _wants_ him to, even if it’s another jab - when he suddenly pulls it away, sits straight up, and runs it through his fringe instead, hopping right off the bed afterward and heading toward the door. "Be right back," he tosses over his shoulder, slipping through the door and closing it gently behind him, leaving Nick to wonder what the hell that was all supposed to be about.

He isn’t left to wonder long, though, since Louis returns almost right away with a glass of water, handing it over along with a couple of tablets of ibuprofen.

"Take that," Louis says, clicking on a lamp and then shutting off the overhead light. 'Can’t have you getting a hangover on my watch."

"That would make you a terrible nurse," Nick agrees, glad to let whatever _that_ was fade away for a moment, sitting up proper, tossing the pills in his mouth, and chasing them with the water, handing the glass back to Louis when he's done.

"And we all know I'm an _excellent_ nurse," Louis says, sitting the glass down on a nearby chest of drawers before throwing his cupboard open and peering inside. "I don't think I have anything that will fit you," he adds, putting his hands on his hips.

"Doesn’t matter," Nick says, laying back down and resting his head on his arm. "Don't feel much like changing really."

"At least take off your shoes then," Louis says, shutting the cupboard door and digging around on the floor until he comes up with something black and sniffs at it, shrugging and folding it over his arm.

"Don't want to take off my shoes," Nick says, shutting his eyes. 

"I'm not taking them off for you."

"Didn’t ask you to," Nick mumbles into the duvet.

"Well you're not getting under my sheets with them on."

"Bossy," Nick says, sitting up, shrugging out of his coat, and peeling his boots off before flopping back down and re-burying his face in the duvet.

Louis laughs. "Was always bossy."

Nick peeks an eye open and grins at him. "You were."

Louis is grinning back at him. "But you never minded."

Nick shakes his head very slowly. "Not much, no."

"Get _in_ the bed Nicholas," Louis says, still smiling as he's heading toward the door. 

"Alright alright," Nick says, waving a hand at him and rolling off the bed, banging his knees a bit and literally crawling under the covers. He thinks he likes Louis’s duvet more than his own.

He tells Louis so when he comes back, waiting until Louis has clicked the lamp off and got himself settled.

He hears Louis laugh and feels Louis’s hand patting at him.

"Well you can come visit it anytime you like," Louis says.

"Can I name the hedgehogs?"

Louis rolls over to face him, and in the moonlight Nick can see he's still laughing. He’s awash in blue, and he’s laughing, and it’s so, so lovely it almost makes Nick’s overtaxed heart stop.

"Sure," Louis says. "Although I reserve the right to change the ones I don’t like."

"But I'll let you name mine. Won’t change them or anything."

"Don't know if you want me doing that."

Nick might. 

"I mean, what if I name them all 'Knobby' or some such. What then?"

Nick still thinks that might be alright.

"Wasn’t he in Harry Potter?"

"That was Dobby, Nicholas. You know, 'Dobby is a free elf?'"

"Don't know," Nick says, watching Louis bunch the duvet around his head so that it’s like he’s got a hoodie on. "Stopped watching after the first one."

"You'll watch the rest with Arlo probably."

"Probably," Nick says, closing his eyes. "When he’s big enough. Heard the last ones aren’t really for little kids like the first ones."

"They're not really."

Nick hums, adjusting his head on the pillow, and it gets so quiet that he’s almost half-asleep when Louis jolts him awake with a question.

"What did you do?"

_What did you do?_

"Do?" he asks, opening his eyes to see Louis looking at him.

"When I left," Louis says, moving closer. "I guess I just...I wanted to know if you...were alright...after."

There’s a lump in Nick’s throat. It’s probably his heart again.

"I know you're knackered, and I shouldn't even be bringing it up, and I'm sorry for that, but I thought you might not have been when you told me about the carob and it’s been bothering me since Tuesday and..."

And.

So many _ands_.

And Nick probably owes him some of the truth at least, especially if he's going to be looking at him like that, so, so _concerned_.

"It’s a very long story Louis, and I am very tired," he says, adding before Louis’s face can completely fall, before he can give him any kind of stiff little nod and roll over, because that is the _last_ thing Nick wants, "but the short version is that I wasn't...well then, hence the acting like a knob thing I told you about, but it got better after you left."

That somehow makes it worse. Louis’s face actually doesn’t so much as fall as it plummets, knocking his mouth open in the process.

"Better?" Louis eventually says, a bit on the small side.

"Yeah," Nick says, a bit breathlessly, and _why can't he breathe_? Does he even _have_ his inhaler? He usually does, but what if he’s forgotten it? "Because...you _knew_ Louis...you knew where you were going and I was so... _stuck_ and it made me so... _miserable_ that I eventually just left too, like you did, and I met some people who helped me, and things...they got better."

 _In and Out_.

 _One and Two_.

"Because I left." It’s said so flatly, and Louis is back to looking upset, not angry-upset but an almost, well, breathless sort of upset, and Nick suddenly realises what he’s said.

He’s such an arse.

"Yeah, but...," he says, really unsure where he’s even going to go before he hits on it. "You know how I kept your number?"

Louis nods. 

"I did think about deleting it when I left but I never could because I, well, I just couldn’t, and later I started thinking it was because I knew I was going to be needing it."

"Be needing it for what?" Still so small, although not quite as flat.

"Inspiration. Getting out of bed, that sort of thing." Nick really hates telling him this part - it makes him feel _so_ _low_ , reminds him of when he was _so low_ \- but he figures Louis deserves to know. "I mean, you wouldn't have been like that, letting things get you down, right?"

"Depends on what it was, but generally no."

"See? And some mornings it was just easier to, I don't know, think about what _you'd_ do and just...do that."

"Thought about me did you?" Louis says, all flatness gone and a big smile on his face.

"Only a little. Barely," Nick says, smiling back at him, laughing when he gets a punch in the chest, grabbing on to Louis’s hand and not letting go, relaxing when Louis’s fingers curl around his thumb. "Usually when I was on the loo."

"Oh my god you dick," Louis says, making the feeblest of attempts at pulling his hand out of Nick’s grip. "I take it all back. Get out."

And Nick knows he's joking, hopes he's joking, but there’s that nasty little voice again, telling him that he’s not. 

Nick really hates that voice.

So instead of saying something like _if you want me to_ , he says, "Afraid I'm all cosy and comfy now so if you really want me gone you're gonna have to be taking care of that yourself."

"Did say I didn't fancy lugging your gangly arse about so I guess you're staying."

"Don't go getting excited, love."

A beat of silence that stretches into another and then, "Wouldn’t dream of it."

"Think you might."

"Wouldn’t."

"Bet you will," Nick says, squeezing Louis’s hand. "You're going to close your eyes" he laughs a bit when Louis actually shuts them "and you're going to dream that you're terribly excited that I'm staying right here."

Louis huffs out a laugh, saying, "Doing it right now, Nicholas."

"Nice isn’t it?"

Nick’s got just enough time to see Louis’s answering nod before he shuts his own eyes.

"'Night Lou."

Louis just squeezes his hand. 

~*~

Nick’s eyes are absolutely _stinging_ when he wakes up.

He’s really got to stop sleeping so much with his contacts in.

He peels them off as best he can and very, very slowly, cupping them in his hand as he gets out of the empty bed, sets about finding a bathroom where he can toss them out. He ends up in one located just outside Louis’s room, all done up in green and white, and it’s very clean from what he can actually see, which is admittedly not a whole lot. Nick tips his lenses into the bin he finds between the loo and the sink and grips onto the doorframe on his way out to keep from utterly falling onto his face.

He makes his way down the stairs very carefully, grateful when he’s able to locate the bannister this time, and he ends up back in the living room where Louis and Niall are both sat on the sofa watching...

"Is that _Sesame Street_?"

Louis and Niall turn around at the same time.

"Good morning Nicholas," Louis says, big smile on his face. At least Nick thinks it's a smile. All he can see is teeth and hair. "Sleep well?"

"Was alright." He's actually not slept so well in a very long time, although he refuses to think it's been five years as he’s dropping down onto the sofa in the open space between Louis and Niall. "Seen this one before," he adds, gesturing at the telly where he knows will.i.am is singing with a bunch of Muppets. It’s a song Nick actually likes a lot, likes playing for Arlo and watching him dance to.

"It’s Niall’s favourite," Louis says, handing Nick what turns out to be a half-eaten bowl of cereal and standing up. "Hold that and I'll get you your own."

"Don't eat cereal," Nick says, more out of form than anything else. He actually loves cereal, considers it close to his heart, but the not being able to have milk makes it tough to have it as much as he’d prefer.

"Yeah, yeah," Louis says over his shoulder. "You're all...healthy, but even Liam eats cereal so that’s all we have, and if you're watching _Sesame Street_ with me and Niall, then you're having cereal."

"Use the almond milk!" Niall shouts, looking at Nick and adding with a shrug, "Liam has almond milk with his cereal. Says it’s the only way he'll eat it with us."

"Thanks," Nick says, still not certain whether or not Niall’s just been reading his mind. Magical Boy Niall. "Where is Liam?"

"Running," Niall says, turning his attention back to the telly and having a big spoonful of cereal, swallowing, and adding, "Saturdays, that’s when he goes running and Lou and I watch _Sesame Street_ 'til he gets back."

"He usually gone a while?"

Niall shrugs again, has another bite of cereal. "Sometimes. Think he might be back early today though."

"Why's that?"

"Get a look at you," Niall says with what looks like a bit of a smirk.

"But he sees me at work."

"This is different isn't it?"

"Suppose it is," Nick says, studying Louis’s cereal he’s still got in his hands, wondering what’s taking Louis so long to get Nick his own cereal. "I mean, you're having me over for dinner. Expect you'll be wanting me to declare my intentions or summat soon."

Niall laughs, and Nick sees him fiddling with his spoon. "Do want only the best for our Louis." He looks up at Nick. "Which means if you're a knob to him again, I'll break your knees."

Nick wonders if Niall somehow also knows about his dodgy knees. Decides that he probably does.

"Duly noted."

"Good," Niall says, tipping his bowl back and then setting it on the table beside the sofa. "Dinner's tomorrow. Two o'clock."

Sunday dinner. Excellent.

"Want me to bring anything?"

"Crisps would be alright."

"Crisps?"

"Or beer, whichever one you feel like bringing."

"Interesting Sunday dinner."

"He's been planning a barbecue," Louis says, obviously back from Singapore or wherever he'd gone to get Nick his cereal, handing Nick the bowl as he’s taking back his own. "Might have forgot to tell you that."

"That would have been helpful, yes."

Barbecue is a lot more manageable than actual Sunday dinner after all.

Louis shrugs and jams a heaping spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

"I mean," he says around his mouthful, swallowing, and then adding, "Probably just gonna be crisps and beer unless we can talk Liam into standing over the barbecue with an umbrella so we can get it lit."

Niall laughs. "Probably."

"You don’t think he’d do it?" 

Nick really does not fancy crisps and beer for Sunday dinner.

Louis laughs and shakes his head.

"Not since we tried that last week, celebrating the new job and all, and nearly burned his eyebrows off," Niall says.

"He did look a little singed when I first met him," Nick says, studying his cereal, debating whether or not he's going to be eating it when Louis solves that for him by nudging him in the arm and giving him a bit of a look. 

"Won't hurt you Nicholas," he says. "Put in the almond milk and everything even though it's a sin against Coco Pops."

"It really is," Niall puts in. "But we love Liam so we let him get away with it."

"I don’t get to get away with it?" Nick asks, getting himself a spoonful and sticking it in his mouth. 

And it isn't _bad_ , the Coco Pops with the almond milk, although it certainly is different. 

"Have to ask Louis about that one," Niall says. "On account of how he’s Cereal Master and we're just his subjects."

Louis clears his throat, leans over Nick, and gives Niall a pinch not wholly unlike the one he'd got off Niall on Tuesday before settling back down on Nick’s left and mouthing _eat_ at him.

So Nick, because he is obliging and actually very hungry, starts eating.

~*~

Liam shows up after they've gone from watching _Sesame Street_ on Netflix to looking up clips on YouTube. 

"Oh that's the sunny day one!" he says, leaning over the back of the sofa and planting a kiss on the top of Niall’s head. "I love that one!"

"Actually didn't know Zachary Levi could sing like that," Nick says, and Liam freezes, very slowly looking over at him. "Hi Liam," Nick adds with a bit of a wave and a smile.

"Hi...Nick," Liam says, looking over Nick’s shoulder to where Nick can actually hear Louis trying to stifle a laugh. "Did I miss something?"

"No Liam," Louis says, definitely amused. "Nicholas here stayed the night is all. You and Niall were already in bed when we got in."

"He's coming tomorrow," Niall says, tipping his head back and looking up at Liam. "For the barbecue."

"I'm not holding any umbrellas this time," Liam says, looking very sternly in Louis’s direction. 

"Of course you’re not _Leeyum_ ," Louis says, nudging Nick’s shoulder. "Nicholas is tall. Think it ought to be him holding the umbrella."

" _Hey_ ," Nick says, turning about and pouting at him. "I’m the guest, aren't I? And I'll get damp if I’m doing that."

Nick does not like being damp, despite where he lives.

"Not if you're holding it right," Louis says, raising his eyebrows and having another bite of his cereal.

"So you know, 'holding it right' means holding it right over Louis’s head so _he_ doesn’t get wet," Niall says, cackling when Louis leans over and pinches him again, swatting at Louis’s hands, standing and collecting his bowl before circling the sofa and grabbing Liam by the arm. "Come along, gotta leave the children to their cartoons."

" _Sesame Street_ 's your idea Nialler!" Louis shouts after him, plopping back down on the sofa with his bottom lip a bit stuck out.

Not that Nick’s been staring at his mouth or anything. 

"And it’s not a cartoon!" Nick shouts over his shoulder, seeing...well, something waving at him from the staircase. "It isn’t," he adds, when Louis sends him a questioning sort of look. "It’s puppets."

"It’s a combination of marionette and puppet actually, hence 'Muppet,'" Louis says, setting his bowl down on the floor and curling up on the sofa so that he’s facing Nick.

"Still not cartoons though," Nick says, going back to his cereal, shivering just a bit when he feels Louis’s finger very gently sliding across his shoulder, back and forth.

"No it isn't," Louis says, still idly moving his finger. "So what did you and Niall talk about?"

"Talk?"

Nick’s still got a mouthful of food, so he’s sure he looks terribly attractive trying to talk around it, cheeks all bulging and unable to see really if anything dribbled out. God, he hopes nothing's dribbled out. He’d have to go somewhere and die if that was the case.

"Whilst I was getting your cereal."

Nick swallows, drags a hand across his mouth - lovely, really, but luckily it's dry - and sets his bowl down on the coffee table, hoping that'll at least mask him then wiping his hand across his trousers.

"Whilst you were in Siberia you mean."

"Wasn’t Siberia," Louis says, jabbing at him and going right back to the finger-sliding. "Took me ages to find the almond milk."

"Still left me alone with The Morrígan though," Nick says, clasping at his knees and studying his hands. "Think I've got a right to be a bit cross."

“Why?” Louis asks. “What’d he do?”

“Wasn’t turn himself into a crow, can tell you that much.”

“Did he say something?” Louis sounds almost amused. Nick looks at him and sees that he sort of is, and so he decides it won't hurt if he doesn't tell him the _entire_ truth.

"Just that he wanted the best for his Louis so it’s a good thing I'm here."

Louis’s mouth drops open. Nick can tell by how there’s a giant O in the middle of his face before it closes and Nick gets a punch in the shoulder. 

"Ow," he says, rubbing at it even though Louis barely did more than lightly grind his knuckles in. "Forget your ability to prevent my hangovers" it's true that he doesn't have one "you are a terrible nurse."

"Am not," Louis says, but he’s back to rubbing Nick’s shoulder, and Nick thinks he might be frowning ever so slightly. He leans in and sees that he is.

And that, somehow, will not do.

"Did you know that when we left the clinic on Tuesday that Arlo wouldn't stop talking about your frogs?"

"My frogs?" 

Nick nods. "The ones on your uniform. Kept saying 'gee fog' and it took me until we almost got back to mine before I realised that he was trying to say 'green frog.'"

"Was he?" This close, Nick can definitely tell that Louis is pleased, can tell by how his cheeks are the slightest bit pink.

"Oh yes," Nick says, nodding again, reaching over and smoothing a few strands of hair out of Louis’s eyes. He thinks he hears a catch in someone's breathing, and he doesn’t know if it's Louis’s or his own.

And he _could_ , he thinks, just lean in further and kiss him, thinks Louis might be alright with that, seeing as how he's looking up him with his lips slightly parted and a dazed sort of expression on his face. Nick swallows, and he’s just moved when there's a godawful clattering from upstairs, sending the world rushing back in, all bright light and banging noises and the faraway sound of someone laughing, joined soon by another laugh of a higher pitch.

God, Nick wants that.

Wants someone to be an idiot with on Saturday mornings. Wants it now more than he's ever wanted it in his life, and he isn’t even going to pretend that he doesn't know who he might want that someone to be.

Because the person sat at his left would be fantastic at it he's sure.

"They're the worst sometimes I swear," Louis says, still pleased and pink, resting his elbow on the back of the sofa and propping his chin on his hand.

"Surprised you're still putting up with it," Nick says, poking at Louis’s knee. 

Louis shrugs, catching Nick’s hand and holding onto it as it drops down near Louis’s feet, tapping an irregular rhythm on the back of it. "Actually been thinking of moving out lately, give them their own space you know?"

"So why don't you?"

"Haven’t found a place I want to go really," Louis says, tugging at Nick’s hand before going back to his tapping. "And Niall would be upset and Liam would pout for days."

"I'm sure they'd get over it though."

"I know," Louis says, concentrating on the back of the sofa where he’s dragging a thumbnail across the cushion. "I've just never really lived on me own and I don’t know if I like the idea of it."

Nick knows the feeling. It’s probably why he’s hardly ever home sometimes, or if he is, then there's usually someone with him.

"How do you deal with it?"

"Deal with what?"

"You know," Louis says, waving his free hand before putting it in his fringe and toying with it, "the living on your own bit. Doesn’t it get lone-, I mean, isn’t too...empty, all by yourself?"

Another clatter, more laughter. Nick sees Louis look over his shoulder toward the stairs before glancing back at Nick and then down at his knees.

"Terribly," Nick says quietly, because it's true and it feels important somehow. "S'why I won't really mind if you want to start dropping in at all hours."

That’s every bit as true too.

Louis's head pops right up. "Really?"

"Of course," Nick says, moving his hand and grabbing onto Louis's before he can pull it back. "Might be nice, having my own personal nurse."

"Paediatric nursing isn’t quite the same you know."

"Not too much of a difference is there?"

"Quite a bit actually. Like, children react differently to certain types of treatments or medicines, so you've got to be careful with what you're giving them, not to mention that babies are way different than toddlers when you’re treating _them_ , and then at the same time, something that works on a child won't always work on an adult."

"But the children's flavours taste better."

Louis laughs, covering his mouth before pushing his hand back up into his hair. "You are right about that. Always did think it was a tragedy that they get bubblegum and we get industrial cherry."

"Is that what you call it? Industrial cherry?"

"Well it isn’t natural cherry. That much is certain."

"It definitely is not natural. Probably came from Mars or somewhere, you know, unearthly."

"Might have done," Louis says, nodding and resting his head on his hand again, squeezing at Nick’s a bit with the other one. "Suppose I'll be bringing children's medicine along next time I'm showing up at yours."

"Would you really?"

"Of course," Louis says. "I mean, it won’t really do anything, mind, but I can bring it anyway. Just for you."

Nick might like that, even if it is pointless. Might even say he gets the tiniest of little rushes off it, especially if Louis is going to be smiling at him like that, all soft and fond and _happy_.

"Thanks."

"Welcome."

The noise from upstairs stops, and with the telly still paused, leaving Zachary Levi doing something that looks a lot like jazz hands, the house gets very quiet - Nick would call it _settled_ \- and he really thinks he'd like to stay right here all day, all weekend, maybe forever if it’s going to be so calm. Even more so if Louis is going to be _with_ him in the calm.

But he can’t. 

Or at least he probably shouldn't. 

He’s still got to get to the shops for example, since the contents of his fridge are pretty much a bottle of coconut water, leftover Sauv Blanc that he probably needs to either drink or pour out, and the remnants of the fish finger sandwich feast that he’s not entirely sure he’s going to ever touch again, at least not without Louis goading him into it, which, he knows he wouldn't mind that at all.

He should probably try getting to the gym at some point today too. Or drag Harry over for some yoga. Nick thinks he might be alright for a spot of the yoga, since he doesn't think it'd involve very much, and he might could use the centring.

"Don't suppose you like yoga do you?"

He looks up and sees Louis pause where he’d been tracing patterns on the back of the sofa, watching as he starts it up again, digging his fingernail in a little harder and nearly scowling. 

"Not a fan no," Louis says, still glaring at the sofa or his hand. Nick really can't tell which. "Liam tried getting us to do it once, and I've never been so bored in me life."

"So that’s a 'no' to doing it with me later then?"

Nick actually hadn’t intended to ask Louis over for the yoga, but it’s out, so there's not much taking it back now.

"Say it is." Louis is back to sounding amused. 

"Don't even want to come over and supervise, tell me I'm doing it wrong?"

Louis huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. "Sounds an awful lot like watching golf, and I _hate_ watching golf."

"When do you watch golf?"

"Whenever Niall wants to watch it, and there’s no one else around for him to bore with it."

"Is that something that happens a lot?"

"More than I’d like," Louis says, giving up his pattern-tracing and laying his arm flat on the sofa back. "You stick around long enough and it'll happen to you too."

"I'm leaving right now then." 

Nick's actually made no move whatsoever to leave, even though he still thinks he should, but Louis lurches forward and grabs onto his arm all the same.

"No you're not," he says, twisting about so that they're side by side, still holding onto Nick’s arm. "If I've got to suffer watching people running about in those hideous trousers, whacking at a little ball with a stick, then you Nicholas, as my oldest friend who isn't in France, not that he would watch it either, are obliged to suffer it with me."

"Am I?"

Nick knows he is. Sacred duty of friendship and all that. Especially if he's one of Louis’s oldest friends. 

"You are," Louis says, sliding his hand down Nick’s arm, warm and electric through the fabric of Nick’s top, circling Nick’s wrist, and reclaiming Nick’s hand.

"Alright," he says, squeezing Louis’s hand and hoping that his thudding heart isn't making itself known in his palm. "I will stay and suffer the golf with you Louis."

"Good," Louis says, moving closer so that their thighs are touching. Warm and electric there too. Nick's going to short out soon. He just knows it. Knows it's coming, and probably sooner than he can even imagine, and that it's going to be huge. "Because it's Masters Week and you're going to be hearing a lot about it."

"What’s Masters Week?"

"Massive golf thing that Niall’s obsessed with. Part of why he’s been wanting to barbecue on Sunday is because it's the last day, and there’s this guy, Rory something-or-other, who he swears is gonna win it all, so he wants to be able to celebrate when he does."

"What if we just drag my friend Harry over, use him as a distraction since he actually likes golf for some reason, and sneak out to go get, I dunno, some chips or something?"

Louis laughs. "You do have some of the best ideas sometimes. I think we should do that."

"I can bring him if you really want." Nick's sure Harry would probably be up for it. He’s an agreeable lad, that Harry.

"Alright," Louis says, resting his head on Nick’s arm. So electric, so warm. Nick could go back to sleep. Him having his contacts out isn't helping either. "I'll let Liam know we might have someone else we can make hold the umbrella."

"Harry could use his hair. Fan it out, make, like, a shield or summat."

"He does have quite a lot of hair," Louis says, abruptly letting go of Nick’s hand and sitting up straight. He’s still close, but it’s somehow not as warm.

"Everything alright?"

"'Course it is," Louis says, smoothing his fringe. "Just didn't...want to hold you up or anything if you were needing to go, that’s all."

And Nick does is the thing, but he still doesn't want to. Wants to kick up a fuss like he’s a child and not have to leave, especially if Louis is going to be acting a bit odd.

But...

"Do need to do a massive shop actually."

"You really do," Louis says, the oddness gone as soon as it'd come on. "You're all out of cereal."

"I _am_ all out of cereal."

"Might need to get several boxes."

"Right. And milk. Just hope someone’s gonna be around to drink it."

"Might could find someone."

"Hope it's someone nice. Someone who doesn't, I don't know, snore."

Louis makes a very indignant sort of noise and smacks him, hard, and alright, he did deserve that one. "I do not snore Nicholas. Any snoring you heard last night was Niall."

"What if I heard it Thursday too?"

"Then you might want to speak to your landlord about how thin your walls are."

"Wonder if they can do anything about kicking too."

"Don't kick either."

"Just a duvet thief then."

Louis pauses mid-word, closes his mouth, and shrugs. "That one is true I'm afraid. Can’t help it if I'm cold a lot."

Nick really needs to check his radiator when he gets back in. He’s sure it’s fine - he’s actually never had much of an issue with it, luckily - but it never hurts to be sure.

"I'll buy extra tea when I'm out then."

"See that you do," Louis says, so pleased Nick thinks, and he’s going to go out right now and buy all the tea he can find on this side of town.

With that in mind, he stands up and proceeds to trip right over the coffee table just inches away.

"Are you alright?" he hears Louis ask as he’s rubbing at his knees.

"'M fine," he says, straightening up and attempting to sort his hair. "Just didn't see the table really."

"How can you not see something that’s right there?"

"Haven’t got my contacts in," Nick says, rubbing at his eyes for good measure. "Hurt like mad when I woke up with them in this morning so I took them out. Had to toss them since I didn't have anywhere really to keep them."

"So you were just going to try finding your way home even though you can't see?"

"I've done it before."

It’s been years, but Nick has got himself home without his lenses in plenty of times. He really only stopped when he got tired of being reamed out by Aimee for it. And Mairead. And his mum. And now apparently, Louis, judging by how stern he’s looking when he stands up and actually glares at Nick.

"You're not going home if you can't see."

"I'm sure it'll be fine. It isn’t far."

"Don't care. You’re not going."

Louis has got his hands on his hips now, so very serious. So very fierce. Makes Nick take a step back and knock his knees into the table again, and it’s even worse the second time around, not that he didn't think it wouldn't be.

"You could help me get there if you wanted," he says, not even bothering to rub his knees this time, figuring it won't do much good. "Might could use a bit of help."

"Could have said so earlier," Louis says, all brightness. "I'll just be getting me shoes."

~*~

"I can actually see you know," Nick says, as Louis is leading him by the arm to his own door. "Everything’s just really fuzzy-looking."

"Is that right?" Louis asks, stopping just outside Nick’s door and holding up his hand. "How many fingers then?"

Nick squints and leans in. "Three?"

"Four technically," Louis says. "Although I did have two of them crossed."

"Oh," Nick says, digging around in his pockets for his keys, pulling them out, and bending over so he can see to fit them in the lock. "Doing _that_ gesture again. You know, most people stopped making that particular sign in the 90s."

"Not most people am I?" Louis says, and out of the corner of his eye, Nick can see him toying with his hair.

"I wouldn't say so even if I thought you were," Nick says, getting his door unlocked and stepping through, Louis on his heels.

"But you don't think I am, right?" 

Nick’s about in his living room when he hears that, and when he turns around to look at Louis, he sees that he's stopped just by the closed front door.

"Of course I don't," Nick says, heading back over to him, so confused, because the _way_ Louis had asked his question had made it seem like it was _terribly_ important, and he thinks it's just as important that Louis knows that he’s never been most people. Probably couldn't be most people for Nick if he tried. "Why would you even need to ask that?"

Louis shrugs. "Just...," he says, grabbing at his fringe, "needed to make sure, I guess."

"Write it down for you if you like."

Nick will write it a million times if he has to. 

Louis gives him a faint smile. "I think I might like that actually."

"Alright," Nick says, trying to remember where he’s put his glasses before he remembers that they're usually by his bed and heading toward the bedroom. "Need to get my glasses, and then I will write out how very much not most people you are for me."

"Thank you," he hears Louis say very softly, and it makes him pause and turn around, but he can’t really make out Louis’s face when he does, so he decides the best thing to be doing is getting his glasses and a biro and hurrying back as quickly as possible. He almost screeches to a halt when he gets back, plastering a piece of paper against the wall, scrawling out _Louis is the best_ , adding lots of exclamation marks and very clearly signing his name, handing it over with a bit of a flourish. 

"Gonna treasure this I will," Louis says, studying it before looking back up at Nick.

"Could put it on your wall."

"Tack it to my ceiling like I used to do with my posters back home."

"Would you really?"

"Might," Louis says, folding it very carefully and sticking it in his pocket.

"Be all kvell if you did."

Louis’s eyes widen, and then he's scrabbling in his hoodie pockets, pulling out his mobile and tapping away at it. "Almost forgot."

"Forgot what?"

"Your word," Louis says, still tapping and then scrolling so fast Nick begins to wonder if he’s actually seeing anything before he stops and looks at something that makes his face fall.

"What?" Nick asks, trying to peek over the top of Louis’s screen. "Is it a bad one?"

"Not...especially no, just...well nothing. It’s nothing."

"Today's word is 'nothing?'"

"No, it's...placate," Louis says, scrolling a bit more before clicking his mobile off and putting it in his pocket.

"What’s so bad about placate?"

"Nothing," Louis says, putting his hands in his pockets. "Just...think I might be going now."

Oh.

"Alright."

It’s surprisingly hard to get the word out.

"I mean, you've got your shop to do, so I'll just..." Louis has got his hand on the doorknob. Nick wishes he’d take it off. "Just be...going, yeah. See you tomorrow and all."

Nick nods, his throat dry.

"Two, right?"

"Right," Louis says, looking down at the doorknob and starting to turn it, sending up a chorus of _nonono_ inside Nick’s head.

Because Louis is upset, Nick knows he is even if he doesn't know why, and it feels entirely too much like goodbye.

Too much like _last time_.

It’s even raining and grey like it'd been that day.

It’s raining and grey and Louis is upset and he is _leaving_.

And Nick’s watching, unable to move or even speak, as Louis opens the door - _no_ \- and steps through it, closing it quietly behind him.

It’s like all the air leaves his lungs at once, and Nick actually has to find something to hold onto so he won’t topple over.

He’s stood there, trying to catch his breath, noticing just how very pale his hand is against the dark wood of the doorframe, and he’s trying to convince himself that it _isn't_ goodbye, it _isn’t_ five years ago, that Louis is just going back to his and Nick will see him tomorrow.

He’s doing a rubbish job of it.

He’s doing a rubbish job, and he’s patting at his pockets, searching for his inhaler and not finding it. 

Not finding it and he _needs_ it, and Louis is leaving, is probably gone already, isn’t coming back.

Isn’t. Coming. Back.

Nick’s knees hit the hardwood, and it _hurts_ , but not as much as his chest, his squeezing and constricted chest does.

He needs his inhaler. 

He needs to open that door.

But...he can’t move, stuck in place on his floor, grasping at his knees, and trying to will himself upright. 

God, it hurts.

It hurts and he can't breathe.

_In and Out._

_One and Two._

_In and Out._

_One and Two._

_In and Out._

_One and Two._

Nick manages to sort of stumble himself upright, clinging onto the doorknob and pulling himself up the rest of the way, very slowly opening the door.

There’s no one on the other side.

No one.

No Louis.

But that's...okay.

_In and Out._

_One and Two._

Because he can’t have got too far.

Nick very slowly peeks into the corridor, and his poor beleaguered heart, it stops.

Louis is about a metre or two off, head down and his hands in his pockets, almost shuffling toward the lifts.

"Louis."

Louis doesn’t turn around, doesn’t stop.

Nick clears his throat, tries again. 

Louis freezes in place, very slowly turning about. His eyes are wide but a bit far away, and his lips are parted, and he’s gone rather pale, Nick thinks.

Nick starts down the corridor toward him, very slowly on account of his still smarting knees and trailing a finger along the wall, dropping his hand when he reaches Louis and shoving both of them in his pockets.

"You...could stay."

"Yeah?"

Louis looks almost... _hopeful_.

Nick nods. "Like it if you did."

"Thought you needed to go out."

"It’s just shopping," Nick says with a shrug. "And I might forget the cereal."

 _Please stay_.

"Can't have that," Louis says softly, already stepping forward. It’s about all Nick can do not to wrap his arms around him and pull him back inside.

"No I can't," he says instead, getting a hand out of his pocket and putting it in his hair before letting it drop to his side. "Old friend would never forgive me."

Louis laughs. "He might. Just the first time though."

"I'll be remembering that then."

"Be remembering his tea too," Louis says, stepping close to Nick’s side and nudging him very gently with his elbow.

"Did say I'd get him all the tea on this side of town."

"Did you?"

Did he?

“Or maybe I just planned to.”

"Your friend might like that, long as you get him the right kinds."

"Good thing he’s going with me then."

"Say it is."

"Think he’d let me get him his lunch after?"

"He might," Louis says, swaying a bit into Nick’s side. "Although I think he’d probably just rather come back to yours and watch more _Parks and Rec_ if that’s alright with you."

"Sounds perfect actually."

"Really?"

Nick nods.

Because it does, sound perfect. Sounds dull and ordinary and settled and perfect all at once. Sounds like something he very much wants a lot.

"Wicked," Louis says, taking a step back. "Let’s go then, before it gets really nasty out there."

"Kinda needed to shower first," Nick says, tugging at his hair again, still a bit tacky from gel and last night's sweat. "Feeling a bit gross."

"But you don't look gross."

"I don’t?"

Louis shakes his head. "Definitely not gross."

"Thanks."

Nick might not look gross, at least in Louis’s opinion that he values very much, but he’s sure he probably looks rather...colourful.

"Welcome."

"Still want a shower though."

Preferably a cold one.

"Alright," Louis says, leaning into him, pressing in ever so slightly with his arm, before pulling away and stepping toward Nick’s front door. "Let you have your shower then."

"So generous," Nick says, catching up to him and putting a hand on the small of his back, not sure if that little hitch of breath he heard was real or something he just imagined, and if it was real, whether it was his or Louis’s. 

He knows _his_ breathing's still a bit off.

"I am the _soul_ of generosity Nicholas," Louis says, pausing before starting forward again. "Don't you be forgetting it."

"I wouldn't dare," Nick says, letting them back into his flat and shutting the door behind them, nearly tumbling into Louis when he turns around on account of how close he is.

So, so close.

So close Nick has to put a hand on his shoulder to steady himself, and he doesn’t _mean_ to turn it into an embrace, exactly, but that's what happens anyway.

But it’s okay, because Louis seems to sink right into it, winding his arms around Nick’s waist and holding on just as tightly. 

"Are you sure everything's alright?" Nick asks, slightly muffled on account of how he’s mostly talking into Louis’s hair.

Louis shakes his head. "I don't think it is."

Something leaden and heavy starts trying to twist through him.

"What’s wrong?"

_Please don't say you want to leave, that you're regretting this._

"I...don't know if I can say," Louis says, and he sounds somehow watery and breathless at the same time.

"Why not?"

"Because it's dumb, and it doesn't matter."

"It might. I mean, it must be important to you, or it wouldn't worry you so."

"I'm not _worried_. I just...want to know something, and I don’t....know how to ask without sounding like an idiot."

"I won't think you're an idiot."

Louis freezes, and he’s quiet for a very long time.

Until, "you promise?"

"Of course."

Louis pulls back and studies Nick’s face. His eyes are wide, and so, so blue. "You have to promise."

"I promise."

"Okay," Louis says, relaxing and letting go of Nick. "I just...God, this is so hard." He steps back and starts fiddling with his fringe.

"You don’t have to do it now."

Louis looks up from his feet. "I don't?"

Nick shakes his head. "'Course not. You do it when you're ready."

"And that'd be alright?"

"Of course it'd be alright."

“Okay,” Louis says again, gusting out a sigh and tugging at his hair just a bit more before sticking his hands back in his hoodie pockets and nodding in the general direction of Nick’s bathroom. “Be letting you get to your shower then.”

“Okay,” Nick echoes, hesitant to leave it, really, but he isn’t going to push for once, and Louis is already heading into the living room and plopping down on the sofa, grabbing the remote and propping his feet up on Nick’s coffee table, evidently meaning to stick around for a while. “I’ll just...de-grossify myself, and we can go.”

“Not gross,” Louis says, looking over at him with a smile that heats Nick’s cheeks before turning his attention back to the telly.

Right, cold shower.

Nick will...just be getting on with that.

~*~

Louis is sitting on the bed when Nick walks back into the bedroom after his shower.

"Lou?"

Louis looks up from where he’d been fiddling with his hands. 

He is so pale and so... _serious._

"Everything alright?"

Louis shakes his head.

"Same thing?" Nick asks, his heart back in his throat as he’s taking a seat right beside Louis, leaving about an inch or two between them in case Louis needs it.

Louis nods.

"You really don't have to say anything if you're not ready. You know that right?"

Louis nods again. "Tired of not knowing though," he says, looking up with a smile that just barely meets his eyes.

"Not knowing what?"

"Not knowing if you..." Louis says, a bit breathlessly, and Nick can actually feel the blood starting to drain from his face as Louis is looking back down at his hands.

"If I...?" he asks, swallowing around his heart that's not left his throat. 

"If you...ever...stopped."

_If you ever stopped._

Louis looks back up at him, his eyes a bit shiny.

"You said once, back....then, that you fancied me and that you wished we could, and I just...I wanted to know if you ever...if you ever stopped...feeling that way."

It _slams_ into him.

Right into him, almost sending him reeling.

_If you ever stopped._

Because he hadn’t, is the thing.

He hadn’t ever really stopped, not at all, and from the way it sounds, the way it looks - Louis’s face so red as he’s turning it back to his hands, beginning to wring them - Nick thinks Louis must not have either. 

"I didn’t," he says, mostly in a whisper, clearing his throat and saying it again, only louder. Saying it louder so Louis will _know_. 

It’s so...deafening, those two words in this little room with only the sound of rain falling outside. So loud, and when Louis lifts his head, it almost does look like he's been struck by something, and he keeps looking, keeps searching Nick’s face until his own settles into a smile and he moves closer so that they're touching again, so, so warm against Nick’s side.

"I didn’t either," he says, still smiling and trailing a finger across Nick’s forehead, moving away a lock of hair that'd fallen across it.

It makes Nick shiver. Makes him close his eyes.

So, so much.

Especially when Louis’s finger becomes his hand and it’s cupping Nick’s cheek.

Nick gasps.

Hears Louis say his name, feels Louis’s grip tighten ever so slightly on his face, and he knows he's got to be red and burning, but he turns his head into it all the same, unable to tell if it gets warmer on account of his cheek or Louis's hand. 

"So we can try?"

Nick’s eyes fly open.

Louis is still looking at him, so shiny and bright and _beautiful_.

"I want to," he's saying, voice hushed as he's very lightly moving his thumb across Nick’s cheekbone. "I think we can, and I want to. Been wanting it all week."

Nick nods as best he can without dislodging Louis’s hand.

"I think we should."

Louis's face lights up - so flushed and so _lovely_ \- and he bites his lip, moving his hand to cup the back of Nick’s head and winding his fingers into Nick’s hair.

As for Nick’s heart, it is _pounding_. His breath is short, and he is so, so light-headed. 

And Louis is still beaming at him and guiding his head forward, and when their lips touch, it's electricity _everywhere_.

Absolutely everywhere, and Nick sinks into it, sinks into _Louis_ , twisting a bit so the angle isn’t so off, and moving his arm to put it around Louis’s waist, that dizzying feeling growing when he hears Louis’s breath catch and Louis breaks away just enough to murmur _Nicholas_ against his lips before closing that slight bit of distance between them again, his grip tight on the back of Nick’s head like he means to never let him go.

And Nick’s clinging on to _him_ , because he _doesn’t_ mean to let Louis go, not for a very long time. 

He doesn’t tell Louis that when they finally come up for air, because that might be a little much, although he does hold him close, hold him tight, whilst he’s telling him how he’s never been so happy to be late in all his life as he was on Tuesday.

And that might be a little much too, but, judging by the way Louis is looking up at him, surprised at first but then so, so happy as he’s pulling Nick back in, that Nick thinks it just might be alright. 

And when Louis _keeps_ pulling, dragging both of them back and down, causing Nick to land halfway on top of him and not letting go as he’s saying "I'm glad you were late too," Nick doesn’t just think it might be alright.

He _knows_ it.


	4. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...here we are again, you and me, on the last page, er, pages. To be honest, I wasn't ever really super satisfied with the original epilogue, and one day last week I sat down and decided to try to write a better one. I can't tell you how fantastic it was getting to be back in this story again, and I hope you like it too. :)

The air con’s broken in Sound Control.

Nick knows because Mikel up there on stage keeps whinging on about it, and they’ve only just got through “All at Once,” which is the first song of TATE’s set.

 _Honestly_.

Except, it really is absurdly warm in this place. Nick had finally lost his coat after White Eskimo had finished their set, Daisy looks like she’s about ready to strip completely, which, he’s sure Harry wouldn’t mind that, the poor lad trying so hard to look dignified in his long coat, and Louis’s hair is clinging to his face even as he’s jumping up and down with the rest of them.

TATE really is a completely different band live. Less indie, more punk.

Nick loves it.

Louis hasn’t let go of him all night, and Nick loves that too.

The second song is faster, so much faster than the first, and everyone’s cheering and screaming right over Anna’s synthesizer part and then right over the churn of the guitars when they kick in, which is why Nick doesn’t recognise it until he feels Louis stop moving beside him.

Until he can make out the lyrics.

_The crush of bodies in one space. I feel your hot breath on my tongue._

Nick stops moving too.

Because it’s _that_ song, the one he’d heard on a night a very long time ago someone with very blue eyes and a very dizzying face had shouted at him “Let’s go to yours!”

_I wonder where you’ve gone._

That same someone with the same very blue eyes and the same very dizzying face looking back at him, his smile growing when Nick reaches for him as the band heads into the chorus.

“Let’s go to yours!” Nick shouts, completely off his head with happiness and with no intention whatsoever of going back to Louis’s with its Niall and its Liam there.

“Not a chance Nicholas!” Louis shouts back at him, jumping again in time with the music. "We're going back to yours!"

~*~

And they do go to his.

Long after the concert’s over, after the last note fades and Mikel tells them they’re the best fucking crowd the band’s ever had the pleasure of sweating it out on, Nick says his goodbyes to Harry and Daisy and Niall and Liam, and, taking Louis’s hand, leads him out into the night, running with him down the rain-soaked streets and not stopping, it almost feels like, until they're at Nick’s door and stumbling through it.

Stumbling through it and landing together in a heap on the floor, Nick on top and Louis down below, and it’s terrible on his knees, but Nick thinks he could stay there all night if it meant he got to keep looking at Louis looking back at him all flushed and breathless with fading laughter and so lovely it almost aches.

"You okay?" he asks, breathless himself with a smile stretching his own cheeks.

"Yeah,” Louis says, shutting his eyes as Nick’s moving his hair away from his forehead. There’s a catch in his breathing as it slows, and his lips part just the slightest bit when Nick drags his finger down to trace the line of his jaw.

"Lou.”

It comes out almost choked.

Louis hums and turns his head, following the movement of Nick’s finger from one side of his face to the other. His cheeks are warm and his skin's got a slight scratch to it from stubble, and Nick’s heart seizes because it wasn't...like that.

Not _before_ , in a cramped flat with floors that were always cold, far away and years ago, and it’s all rushing back in _now_ , more than it’d ever done on Saturday and the week before, how gone he’d been for a boy in too-tight trousers, how really, really gone, and how he'd tried and how he'd let him down.

Nick suddenly can't breathe.

"Louis,” he says, and it’s not more than a whisper, but Louis’s eyes open all the same, and they're wide as he’s studying Nick’s face.

"Where is it?” he asks in a low voice.

Nick’s head is spinning.

"Where's what?”

“Your inhaler,” Louis says, trying to sit up and not being able to on account of Nick being sat mostly on his stomach.

"Pocket,” Nick wheezes out, his lungs still seizing like his stopped heart, "coat.”

"Alright,” Louis says, pushing at him, “move your bony arse and I’ll get it.”

Nick laughs, more a puff of air than anything, and slides back, ending up straddling Louis’s hips, and he thinks he must have just gone mental because it's...okay.

It’s electric and fiery and warmth spreading up from his belly, and it’s just...really, really okay.

But he still takes his inhaler when Louis pushes it into his hand, taking a puff and shutting his eyes, thinking _ye olde one and two_ as the Ventolin’s seeping into his airways.

"Better?” Louis asks, once Nick’s set the inhaler down on the floor beside them and leaned forward to rest his weight on his hands instead of on Louis’s crotch.

"Yeah,” Nick says, because he is, although his fingers still feel like ice and his head's a bit too loose. "Sorry. Had a moment.”

"What kind of moment?”

It’s hushed and Louis’s lips are turned down at the corners.

"A leftover one,” Nick says, leaning down and brushing his fingers across Louis’s fringe again and pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. It sets his heart to thumping in his chest, so Nick cups the back of Louis’s head as best he can and kisses the other corner of his mouth, adding, "but it’s okay.”

"Is it?”

Nick pulls away just enough that they're almost nose-to-nose, and he nods and breathes out a _yes_ before closing the distance between them.

He hears Louis gasp and he feels his arms coming up to circle his neck, trying to pull them closer together somehow, so he pushes his hands under Louis’s shoulders and holds on as tight as he can.

Because he doesn't mean to let him go, not for a long time.

And he doesn’t, not even when he’s helping him up off the floor after they've come up for air, holding onto him as he's shutting the front door at last and then leading him into the bedroom.

“We don't have to,” Louis says, even as he’s pushing Nick’s coat off his shoulders, going up on his toes and pulling Nick down.

"I know,” Nick says, right before their lips meet, winding his arms through Louis’s and cupping his cheeks. Louis’s hands fall to Nick’s waist, fists curling into the fabric of his shirt, bunching it, and the breathy little sigh that comes out of him when Nick presses their lips together has Nick feeling electricity right down to the soles of his shoes.

Electricity going down and warmth spreading up even to his ears, and Louis’s hands leave Nick’s waist to almost claw at his back, his fingers digging in and pulling at his shirt, and Nick only lets go of Louis’s face long enough to direct his hands back around to his front, positioning them flat against his chest right at where his buttons are usually already halfway undone and leaving them there before winding his fingers into Louis’s hair.

He thinks he feels Louis’s hands shaking as he’s getting the rest of the buttons undone, and he knows there’s a tremor that runs through _him_ when Louis finishes with the last one and starts trying to push Nick’s shirt off after his coat, his thumbs brushing across bare skin, so light that Nick can't help _but_ shiver.

He lets his arms fall down by his sides and he lets Louis work them through his sleeves, his shirt landing somewhere on the floor behind him. He watches as Louis’s hands drift down, his fingernails skimming across Nick’s chest and over his stomach, stopping at his jeans and beginning to fumble with the button and the zip. His head’s down from where he’s focused on his hands, and when Nick slides a finger under his chin and tips it up, he sees for a split, split second a floppy-haired teenager looking back at him, his cheeks round and flushed and his eyes huge and so, so blue.

And it’s okay.

It’s really, really okay.

“Hi, love,” he says, and the words hang there in the air, for an endless minute, until Louis’s face softens into a smile.

"Hi,” he says, his voice gone a bit raspy, and he’s still smiling as Nick traces the edge of his bottom lip with his thumb. "You're really alright.”

"I know,” Nick says, not moving his eyes away from Louis's mouth. "Weird, innit?”

Louis laughs and shakes his head, his eyes bright when Nick looks up.

"Not weird,” he says, his skin warm as Nick trails a finger along his jaw and past his ear, stopping at the back of his neck and cupping it in the palm of his hand.

He’s still smiling when Nick pulls him into a kiss.

And it feels...easier after that.

Easier to shimmy Louis out of his coat and his shirt and his jeans, to let Louis push him backwards until he's landed right on the bed, to let him pull off his boots and his socks and his jeans, throwing each item over his shoulder as soon as he’s got it off and climbing on top of him when he's done.

"Hi,” he says again, holding himself upright over Nick, his bum resting on Nick’s stomach and one hand on each side of his head.

"Hello,” Nick says, busy with trying to take all of him in at once. It’s just...he isn’t sure what he wants to look at first. There’s Louis’s face, which he could look at all day if he’s honest, and the movement of his arms and shoulders as he’s fidgeting just a bit and then there's…

“This is new,” he says, tracing the _it is what it is_ inked across Louis’s chest.

“Got it in uni,” Louis says, glancing down at it and back up.

"Wasn’t because of me, was it?”

Nick meets his eyes and then returns to his tracing, keeping the touch light enough that goose pimples start to pop out on Louis’s skin.

"Is it going to bother you if I say it was?”

Nick shakes his head.

"Was it?” he asks, still concentrating on the swoops and the swirls of the letters and the feeling of Louis’s skin against his own.

"No,” Louis says eventually. "Not completely anyway.”

"It’s alright,” Nick says, finishing off the final _s_ and starting back at the beginning, adding more loops and flourishes as he goes. "Rotten timing, back then.”

"Yeah,” Louis breathes out in what almost sounds like a sigh of relief.

"But not rotten timing now,” Nick says, glancing up.

"No,” Louis says. "S’why we’re trying.”

“It is,” Nick says, pressing his fingertips into Louis’s chest and trailing them up over his collarbones, pausing at his shoulders and then lightly scraping his fingernails down Louis’s back. Louis gasps and starts and shivers when Nick's hands reach the waistband of his pants and then he's bending down, fisting Nick’s hair and kissing him so hard it takes his breath away. 

Nick skims his fingernails up Louis’s back, grabbing onto him by the shoulder blades and pulling him so close that there's not a whisper of air between them. Louis makes a sound halfway between a whine and a whimper, his grip on Nick’s hair getting even tighter, and it goes right to Nick’s pounding heart.

He really didn't ever stop, did he?

He rakes his fingers through Louis’s hair and forces his mouth away just enough to ask, "How’d you want to?”

Louis’s face is flushed, his eyes dazed and his lips shiny and red, and Nick’s only got a moment to think _I did that_ before Louis is saying, “Like...before.”

Like before.

The air seems to leave Nick’s lungs all at once.

And it does come like a punch, in the gut, in the back, in the face.

All at once.

He’ll have to tell Louis that later.

He knows he’ll love it, can see his laugh now.

But before then…

“No head-butting me this time.”

Louis laughs and whispers out an _okay_ , and he goes easily as Nick’s rolling him over onto his back. He lifts his hips when Nick scratches at the skin right above his waistband, and Nick doesn’t _mean_ it to be a tease, but he can’t help but notice the way Louis is squirming as Nick’s slowly pulling his pants down.

"You're terrible,” Louis says, with a bit of a huff, and Nick would dispute that, he _would_ , except most of his attention is focused solely on Louis's dick, hard and red and already leaking from the tip.

And it’s not like he’s got vivid memories of it from _before_ , more like it's...he’s...he’s waiting for the clanging _nononono_ to set back up, for something else that’s...leftover.

"Just going to stare at it all night?” Louis asks, but there's a bit of a shake in his voice that snaps Nick right out of his daze.

"Think I might,” he says, looking away and meeting Louis’s eyes. They’re rounder than they need to be, which is why Nick feels almost duty-bound to add, “I mean, it is a nice dick.”

Louis’s cheeks go red, but his smile is bright as he’s hitting Nick with a pillow.

"Go on then,” he says, settling back on his elbows. "Show us yours.”

"Bossy,” Nick says, even as he’s standing up and then stepping out of his pants, flicking them at Louis’s head because he really can't _not_ and then climbing on top of him, going along when Louis puts his arms around his neck and sends them both crashing backwards.

It is like crashing, he thinks, closing his eyes as Louis pulls him into a kiss, and it’s perfect, really, how he's able to _feel_ better.

To feel Louis’s skin warm against his own, to feel the scratch of stubble against his cheek and his hand as he’s moving to mouth at Louis’s neck, the _sound_ Louis makes when he sinks his teeth in just a bit, how he trembles when Nick keeps sliding his hand down and rests it on his hip, how wet he is against Nick’s stomach, and how tight his grip is in Nick’s hair.

"Nick, _please_ ,” Louis rasps out, and Nick’s only really ever been able to tell him no the one time, so he nods as best he can, pressing a kiss over the love bite he's just left, and sits back, prying Louis’s hand out of his hair and holding onto it as he’s kissing his way down Louis’s stomach, and there’s something about each little twitch of muscle under Louis’s skin that has him smiling so wide his cheeks hurt.

He rests his forehead against the slick skin underneath Louis’s navel, the better to catch his breath and steady himself, and he doesn’t look up until he feels Louis petting at his hair.

"I really missed you,” he says, resting his chin on Louis’s stomach where his forehead’s just been and looking back at him. Louis’s eyes are wide even in their daze, but then there's a smile spreading across his face as he's moving Nick’s sticky hair out of his eyes.

"I really missed you too,” he says, and it’s so quiet that Nick can just barely hear it, but it’s still enough to send a thrill running through him, all electric and shivery, and the catch he hears in Louis’s breathing as he’s dragging his chin further down almost has him feeling like fire.

"Shitting fuck,” he hears Louis pant out as he’s taking him in his mouth, and he can't help but laugh and tap him on the hip with his free hand and say, a bit muffled, "Language.”

Louis groans and hits him with the pillow again.

Nick pulls off and licks a broad stripe up the underside of Louis’s dick, pausing at the tip and tonguing the slit, the taste of salt and the smell of _Louis_ all around going right to his head. It’s so much that he has to sit back for a moment, forgetting about how he's supposed to be teasing Louis after all, and try to remember to _breathe_.

"Nicholas,” Louis says, starting to drag the last syllable out, only to stop when their eyes meet. He’s about to say something else, his face almost as colourless as Nick’s feels, but he cuts himself off when Nick shakes his head.

"Bedside table,” he's able to choke out, and Louis looks at him forever it seems like until at last he nods and moves over as best he can, opening the drawer one-handed and coming up with the lube and a condom, setting the condom on his stomach and offering Nick the lube.

Nick’s got his hand out to take it, only to think better of it and flip his hand over, wiggling his fingers just a bit until Louis gets the idea and throws the cap back with his thumb, squeezing a generous amount onto Nick's hand and coating his fingers and his palm with slick.

Nick keeps his eyes on Louis as he’s moving his hand down, waiting for...something, only he isn’t sure what since there isn't much leftover to surprise him, except…

“No head-butting,” he says, his voice gone low and a smile curving his lips.

"Okay,” Louis says in a rush of air, smile back on his face as well, one so wide that Nick can still see it as Louis is tipping his head back. He presses a sticky fingertip into Louis’s chin, the laugh he gets in response going right to his very soul it feels like, and then he sets about fingering Louis open. 

Louis freezes when Nick gets the first finger in, but he doesn’t start or jump or anything, and Nick lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding as he’s adding the second and then the third. He lets go of Louis’s hand so he can get the condom on, and once he pushes inside it's like everything stops.

Time, his heart, his breathing, _everything_ , all of it gone until it's just him and Louis, _tied like two in tethers,_ and when Nick gets his mind back, he just might write Mikel Jollett a nice letter about his lyrics, but that's all he’s able to think before Louis is digging his fingernails into Nick’s back and begging him to _move_.

And he feels like he _can’t_ , that if he does it's going to be all over, but Louis is gasping and begging and clawing at him, so he reaches around and takes Louis’s hand back, intertwining their fingers and resting their hands above Louis’s head, and starts to move, as slow as he can for as long as he can.

His vision eventually starts to go white, and all he can hear is Louis panting out his name and _I'll carve your name out of the sky_ running through his head, which is a lot, really, except Nick knows that he would.

You don't go missing someone for years, get them back, and not have massive feelings about them after. 

You just _don't_.

" _Louis_ ,” he breathes out, as his hips are picking up speed. He feels Louis wind his fingers into his hair and then he's being pulled down into a kiss, and it’s terrible the angle he’s got his back at and he’s going to feel it for _ages_.

And he wouldn't change a thing.

Not. A. Thing.

He kisses Louis back as best he can, missing his lips as his rhythm starts to falter, and as his vision’s getter whiter and whiter, he hears Louis cry out, feels him arch his back, come slick against his stomach, and when Nick follows him over, it's with his free hand shoved under Louis’s shoulder, gripping it hard, and his face tucked into his neck.

He stays that way, back bent nearly double, long after his breathing’s evened out and his vision’s cleared, after his skin's gone cold and his knees have started to ache.

He thinks he could sob, and he doesn’t know why, except it's Louis there under him, isn't it, and the only thing that comes to mind is...relief.

Relief that he’s here and that they're alright and that they didn't ever stop and that they get to _try_.

Get to try properly this time, and Nick already knows, is _sure_ , that they’re gonna smash it.

"Don't go to work today,” he mumbles, chiefly into Louis’s collarbone, his eyes already getting heavier.

"Wasn’t going to,” Louis says, placing his hand flat on Nick’s back, pushing down and trying to force him to lay straight. Nick pulls off the condom before he does, dropping it down the side of the bed, figuring he can deal with it...later, and tucks his head back into Louis’s neck, resting his cheek on Louis’s chest, and stretching out along the length of him. He pushes his hand back under Louis’s shoulder and gets a light grip on it, and when he feels Louis’s arms go around his own shoulders, he really thinks he could go to sleep just like that.

Eventually, he does.

~*~

The sun’s peeking through the windows when he wakes up.

And once again he’s been sleeping in his contacts, can tell by the way his eyes are burning and almost stuck shut.

He’s really got to stop doing that.

He goes to climb out of bed, only to end up falling out of it and landing on his arse, and it’s not until he looks up and sees Louis looking back at him that he understands why.

"You okay?” he hears as he’s blinking up at him, trying to get his contacts unglued from his eyeballs, eventually giving it up as a bad job and taking them right out. 

"Yeah,” he says, rubbing his eyes. "Just need a minute.”

He hears Louis whisper out an _okay_ , and he takes the hand he’s offered to get himself upright, stumbling over a pair of boots that aren't normally there and into the bathroom. He puts his contacts in their case, and then turns on the tap, waiting until the water’s hot before running a flannel underneath and walking with it back into the bedroom. He drapes it across Louis’s stomach and then settles in beside him, on his side and facing him, close enough that he can feel the warmth radiating off his skin.

And there's so many things it feels like he should be saying, so many little uncertainties that feel like they ought to be let loose, only...Nick can't be bothered at all by them.

_I can list each crippling fear like I'm reading from a will._

Because there’s really only one thing that matters right now, at least to him.

"Okay?” he asks, running a finger up Louis’s arm, trailing it across his collarbones and ending up resting his hand on Louis’s shoulder.

"Yeah,” Louis says, a bit breathlessly, his smile wide as he’s moving closer. 

Nick could probably spend forever looking at that smile.

"Good,” he says, pulling Louis right up against him, resting his forehead against Louis’s, and daring anyone to make him move.

_And I’ll defy every one and love you still._

Nick laughs and cups Louis’s cheek, because he would, wouldn't he?

"What’s so funny?” Louis asks, his eyes wide and his cheek growing warmer under Nick's hand.

Nick shakes his head and swipes his thumb across Louis’s cheekbone.

"Nothing,” he says, leaning in and pressing a kiss to Louis’s mouth. "Just...happy, I suppose.”

"Yeah?”

Louis’s eyes have gone bright.

"Yeah,” Nick says, smile still curving his lips as he leans in to kiss him again. "I really am.”

He's calm and he’s settled and he’s with Louis, who’s turning toward him and tangling their legs together, his hand sliding into Nick’s hair, and it's...perfect.

Later, of course, he’ll actually have to move so he can call in a favour from Weekend Dev (not to be confused with AM Dev), and eventually he and Louis’ll have to shower and put their clothes back on, lest Daisy walk in on the two of them when she shows up for their Thursday night baking session (where Louis gets himself elected chief taste tester and the compliment he gives Nick’s quiche makes both their cheeks flame. Daisy says they’re cute).

But for now, for now he isn’t moving, all tangled up as he is with _Louis_ , and it’s absolutely _perfect._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](http://akai-coat.tumblr.com/)!


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